All internet services in Sri Lanka have been restored
after damage to a digital fibre optic submarine cable cut off most
of the island country from the internet earlier this
week.
The SEA-ME-WE 3 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe)
cable of Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT), the largest telecom and internet
services provider in the country, was damaged early Sunday (22
August), allegedly by an Indian vessel that dropped anchor in a
prohibited part off the Sri Lankan coast.
Set up by a consortium of telecommunications service providers,
SEA-ME-WE 3 connects Northern Europe to East Asia and Australia,
spanning approximately 39,000km. It was set up as a follow-on high
capacity cable to the earlier SEA-ME-WE 2 submarine cable system.
SLT's connectivity to the SEA-ME-WE 3 is through a landing point
off Mount Lavinia on the coast of Sri Lanka.
"The restoration of the cable is in progress, but services have
been restored using our SEA-ME-WE 2 cable link and satellite
connectivity," said Kapila Sri Chandrasena, chief marketing officer
of SLT in Colombo. Besides a SEA-ME-WE 2 link, which it set up in
1994, and the SEA-ME-WE 3 link set up in 1999, SLT has three
digital satellite earth stations.
"We are currently getting sufficient bandwidth for both our
internet and telephony services," said Chandrasena, adding that
with the SEA-ME-WE 3, SLT in fact has excess bandwidth.
Soon after the cable was damaged, telephony was restored early
Sunday morning using the SEA-ME-WE 2 link, while international
private leased circuits were restored soon after, according to
Chandrasena. E-mail services were restored by Monday, while all
other internet services including broadband were working normally
again on Thursday morning.
Internet, international dialing and data services of 800,000
subscribers were affected in Sri Lanka, according to SLT, although
some private operators, who have their own international gateways
to the internet, were able to offer service.
SLT has claimed $5m in damages from the shipping company which
owns the Indian vessel, MV State of Nagaland, and a district court
in Colombo ordered the ship detained until a 6 September hearing of
the case.
Chandrasena declined to comment on reports that the ship was
released by the Sri Lankan navy because there was no evidence
linking the ship to the cable damage and that SLT had, in fact,
dropped its case.
It is not clear yet when SLT will be able to restore the damaged
cable. SLT sent a cable repair ship to the site of the damage on to
do physical repairs.
"The testing and rectification of the fault became more
complicated since the restoration operation has to be carried out
without interrupting other [international internet] traffic," SLT
said.
After the damage to the SEA-ME-WE 3 cable, SLT is beefing up its
routing options in both fibre optical undersea cable and satellite
media, which will both increase the available bandwidth, and
provide more backup alternatives in case of similar mishaps.
SLT will now have direct connectivity to Singapore, Germany and
India, apart from its direct routes to the US and Japan.
John Ribeiro writes for IDG News Service