[imagesource:instagram/firouznaderi]
It will take a month or more for a cable repair ship to reach the site of a break in the West African Cable System (WACS) about 3600 km northwest of South Africa, according to MyBroadband.
A rock fall in the Congo Canyon on Sunday caused damage to our South Atlantic 3 (SAT–3) undersea cables, and since Monday, several reports of dodgy connections have come in.
Based on the distance measured using the systems’ Coherent Optical Time Domain Reflectometer, the breaks occurred between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon.
Telkom confirmed the breaks and assured the impact on its operations would be minimal. “We are collaborating with the consortium partners to facilitate the restoration of these cables,” a spokesperson said.
Telkom said the impact on its network was limited to customers using international private leased circuits services.
The cable-laying ship Léon Thévenin was mobilised for deep water repair. However, according to a recent status update, the ship is currently busy with repairs on another subsea cable system. The ship landed in Mombasa, Kenya on Sunday after a 10-day voyage from Cape Town.
The estimated time of arrival to reach the site of the WACS fault is anywhere during the first three weeks of September, subject to weather conditions.
Laying undersea cables is a years-long process that costs millions of rands. Cables are safest in deep water where they can rest on a relatively flat seabed, and won’t rub against rocks or be at risk of other disturbances.
According to USPTO, 99% of all the internet in the world runs through cables the size of a hosepipe.
New #dataviz! The Earth’s submarine fiber optic cable network, visualized in #RStats with #rayrender.
Rayrender Github:https://t.co/iB5nWhGY7l pic.twitter.com/1FTKM0FPHr
— Tyler Morgan-Wall (tylermorganwall at fosstodon) (@tylermorganwall) September 22, 2021
Cables in less hospitable areas can be a bit thicker than hoses and often wrapped in extra plastic, kevlar armour plating, and stainless steel to ensure they can’t be broken. Depending on the coast, cable companies might also have to build concrete trenches far out to sea, in order to tuck the cable in to protect it from being bashed against rocks.
In total, there are hundreds of thousands of kilometres of cable that can lie 8000 metres below the surface—as deep as Mount Everest is tall.
So it’s not just a case of popping down to the seafloor to replace a section.
[source:mybroadband&mentalfloss]
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