Tvm: The breakdown of the deep-sea SEA-ME-WE 4 cable has slowed down Internet connectivity traffic in Kerala over the past four days. Services are expected to be normal by Saturday. SEA-ME-WE 4 is used to carry telephone, internet, multimedia and various broadband data applications.
The South East Asia - Middle East - Western Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) optical fibre submarine cable system that carries telecommunications between South East Asia and Europe, was reportedly cut in three places near Italy. The submarine cable system outage resulted in service disruptions in its terminal stations including India, among other countries in South East Asia and the Middle East. The cable repair ship was mobilized on April 26 and a full recovery is expected by May 01.
The outage has resulted in slow Internet connectivity over the last few days and in some cases a complete service break down. Many Internet users complained the difficulty in accessing websites, especially the ones with heavy graphics. According to an official with Asianet Satellite Communications, the leading ISP in Kerala and the providers of Asianet Dataline, there was no severe outage although about 10% of their customers were hit. The company managed to stabilise the traffic through alternate routing and rerouting.
According to KelNet Communications, the only ISP based in Technopark, many companies in Technopark and Infopark, the major IT parks in Kerala, were hit by the outage especially those with European clients. Most of the big companies like UST Global and IBS have multiple service providers and they managed the show by rerouting traffic to others. KelNet restored the services through providers using the SEA-ME-WE 3 and FLAG submarine cables. This is the second such incident this month, the earlier being on April 14.
The SEA-ME-WE 4 is maintained and operated by an international submarine cable consortium of 16 companies including Bharti Infotel and Tata Communications from India.
Anil Philip
Kerala IT News
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