The Digital Tsunami: Return of the fax?
| Saturday, 20 January 2007 | |
| "Undersea communications cables fall in the area of state secrets." - Ministry of Communications, Beijing  Firstly, let us congratulate you on successfully downloading this page. As you may have heard, a 7.1-magnitude earthquake south of Taiwan has severed undersea fibre-optic communication cables in several places, disrupting international communications on an unprecedented scale. On Boxing Day 2006, financial transactions came to a sudden halt, and a cluster of countries were temporarily separated from PerezHilton.com and their e-mail. With information aftershocks still being felt around the region, and knock-on problems reported as far away as Australia, millions are asking how this was possible, when it will be properly fixed and whether we should prepare ourselves for another "digital tsunami." Since 2005, submarine cables have linked all the world's continents, apart from Antarctica where demand remains on the cool side. The fine cables are laid beneath the sea to carry telecommunications between countries and make the "world wide web," well, worldwide. Like connecting flights, communications in the region must pass through Taiwan before reaching Southeast Asian countries.  In the aftermath of the Boxing Day outage, Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan's largest telephone company, reported that almost all of the island's phone communications with other Asian countries were down and its capacity to the United States had been reduced to 60 per cent. Of the nine cables that pass through the Luzon Strait, only two (Asia Netcom's EAC and the older Guam-Philippines Cable) were lucky enough to have escaped damage. While repairs continue, overseas Internet access is being transferred through other pathways such as satellite links, which are slow, expensive and unstable by comparison. It has not been uncommon for web-based e-mail to temporarily cut out just before users click "send," starting Mexican waves of groans and sighs through Internet cafes as users decide whether to re-write their messages, call it a day or dust off the fax machine. Repairing the cables is a delicate and time-consuming operation. Divers must hook both ends of the ruptured cables from the ocean floor to 1,000 metres below the surface. After connecting the two ends, they must then test the cable before lowering it to the ocean floor. Eight repair ships were sent, and reports suggested that the cables would be fixed within two to three weeks. However, another earthquake measuring 5.2 on the Richter scale shook the same waters on Jan. 17, bringing further damage to the crippled cables. Hong Kong officials forecast that poor weather conditions could delay repairs well into February. In an age when the Internet is regarded as a constant, few of its users would have believed that its operation is, in reality, as impermanent as the weather. In a sign that providers were also unprepared, a lack of reserve cables meant that new ones had to be transported, prolonging repairs by four to five days. With a frustrated chunk of the world relying on nine fragile lengths of fibre optic cable to support their businesses and personal lives, there has been speculation that the digital disaster is actually due to Asian network capacity constraints and a general lack of investment. Records show that three cable systems - Asia Netcom's EAC, FLAG and REACH's North Asia Loop and the APCN-2 consortium - upgraded their networks' capacity in the past year to accommodate growing traffic volume. Even after these upgrades, most intra-Asian systems operate at less than 15 per cent of their potential capacities. However, the possibility of future earthquakes has already spurred investment, with Chunghwa Telecom mulling over whether to rent or launch another telecommunications satellite or just lay more undersea cables. The good news is that by 2008, Southeast Asia will no longer rely on the earthquake-prone Luzon Strait and speeds are expected to double between Asia and North America. A new undersea line, named EAC Pacific, will connect the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii, California and Japan, making another outage less likely, and downloads of 'Deuce Bigalow 3' much faster. In the meantime, you may find it helpful to recall the immortal words of Edmund Burke: "Patience will achieve more than force." |
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