Ship Anchor, Not Sabotaging Divers, Possibly Responsible For Outage 43
Nerval's Lobster writes "This week, Egypt caught three men in the process of severing an undersea fiber-optic cable. But Telecom Egypt executive manager Mohammed el-Nawawi told the private TV network CBC that the reason for the region's slowdowns was not the alleged saboteurs — it was damage previously caused by a ship. On March 22, cable provider Seacom reported a cut in its Mediterranean cable connecting Southern and Eastern Africa, the Middle East and Asia to Europe; it later suggested that the most likely cause of the incident was a ship anchor, and that traffic was being routed around the cut, through other providers. But repairs to the cable took longer than expected, with the Seacom CEO announcing March 23 that the physical capability to connect additional capacity to services in Europe was "neither adequate nor stable enough," and that it was competing with other providers. The repairs continued through March 27, after faults were found on the restoration system; that same day, Seacom denied that the outage could have been the work of the Egyptian divers, but said that the true cause won't be known for weeks. 'We think it is unlikely that the damage to our system was caused by sabotage,' the CEO wrote in a statement. 'The reasons for this are the specific location, distance from shore, much greater depth, the presence of a large anchored vessel on the fault site which appears to be the cause of the damage and other characteristics of the event.'"
Good News for Global Availability (Score:5, Insightful)
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The ocean is a harsh mistress (Score:3, Interesting)
... undersea cables are heavily armored, not to protect from divers but for anchors and sharks. Sharks are also the reason they generally use optical pumping now ... sharks tend to bite the electrically pumped ones.
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Replying to undo moderation
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Query (Score:2)
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They do put them in areas where ships aren't supposed to anchor, and the areas are clearly marked on charts. But some "captains" ignore the warning markers or have no idea of their position and damage the things.
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Backhoes and anchors attracted to cables ... (Score:3)
I have a question. Why don't they put these cables where ships don't anchor, rather than laying them right straight through the harbour?
They generally don't lay them in areas where ships anchor. Plus in a harbor ships are generally docked or moored at predetermined locations. There is not a lot or stopping wherever you like and dropping an anchor, that interferes with navigation in the harbor. Note the references to distance from shore and greater depths, it sounds like the ship was anchored in open water.
The real problem is that there is a force of nature where backhoes and anchors are attracted to cables. No cable on land or sea is saf
Re:Backhoes and anchors attracted to cables ... (Score:5, Informative)
I have a question. Why don't they put these cables where ships don't anchor, rather than laying them right straight through the harbour?
They generally don't lay them in areas where ships anchor. Plus in a harbor ships are generally docked or moored at predetermined locations. There is not a lot or stopping wherever you like and dropping an anchor, that interferes with navigation in the harbor.
Moorings are also usually strategically placed in a harbor. When the tide turns around, boats will swing around 180 degrees. So each mooring should be clear in a 360 degree circle for a distance which corresponds to the length of the intended boat. An anchor has a much larger circle than a mooring, and when the tide turns, an anchor sometimes lets go or drags depending on the design. People dropping anchor anywhere they like in the harbor could cause a collision when the tide turned. So in many places there are rules that you can't anchor in the harbor anyways. I have seen plenty of cables in harbors for exactly these reasons.
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... undersea cables are heavily armored, not to protect from divers but for anchors and sharks. Sharks are also the reason they generally use optical pumping now ... sharks tend to bite the electrically pumped ones.
That wouldn't deter sharktopus NOR megalodon. Ever since those two became born again they cut our access to vile smut whichever way they can.
Cheeky bastards!
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(posting as anon coward because this is the first post i've ever made on slashdot in almost 10 years of lurking)
a;lksdjoiuoihkjbkjbdkjbva dvbadfb, because really, it's not that fucking important, at least not anymore. Slashdot's been overrun with Libertardians.
Seems to happen regularly (Score:2)
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/02/27/2051209/ship-anchor-damages-african-undersea-cables [slashdot.org]
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/08/02/01/1912220/third-undersea-cable-cut [slashdot.org]
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The oceans are pretty big fucking places. What a coincidence that this keeps happening. You'd almost think it was a shitty cover, the way "so and so died in an airplane crash / heart attack in the hot tub" thing always seems to happen to politicians.
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The oceans are pretty big fucking places. What a coincidence that this keeps happening. You'd almost think it was a shitty cover, the way "so and so died in an airplane crash / heart attack in the hot tub" thing always seems to happen to politicians.
Not to mention the notorious "shot himself while cleaning his gun" and "passenger injury at track level"
Re:Seems to happen regularly (Score:4, Informative)
There are, for reasons of not digging trenches through the Sahara, limited routes between the Indian and the Mediterranean. Vast amounts of ship traffic move along the same routes and every now and then tend to do stupid things. That area is a natural choke point and unfortunately it increases the likelihood of cable cuts.
If you examine cable faults on undersea cables, most tend to occur at these choke points. Seacom for example has not had breaks further south where the landing points are kept well clear, by 50 to 100km, of the harbours in southern Africa.
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Very, hence why repairs are fast (Score:4)
It is a fairly normal occurrence, and there are companies who have multiple ships for the express purpose of fixing breaks. You usually just don't hear about it unless it is accompanied by some kind of conspiracy theory. In reality, cables get damaged and fixed all the time. It happens often enough that it is usually not news.
Miss Utility (Score:3)
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The devil in me... (Score:2)
...would say that sacked the poor guys who were sent to check out and repair the damage.
reminds me of the good ol days... (Score:2)
when using dialup on a 486 to a real unix server and the news reader would post for you when you got disconnected with the message ^h^h^h^h NO CARRIER
The real reason why the divers cut the cable (Score:5, Interesting)
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Or it's a plot form a Bourne movie. Cell phones vibrate, a team of divers at differnt locations look at their phones, drop what they're doing and run to secretly stashed diving gear. They must be in the water in 15 minutes or the CIA won't pay them. Somewhere in Langely a room filled with computer geeks sweats as their boss yells "when will that damn cable get cut?" Someone tips off the local police and the divers get busted on the water. Oh no, what to do? Launch the backup plan. Activate the asset aborad
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Confirmed outside the news. (Score:2)
I work for a large IT company with a presence in Cairo. We were told net issues were caused by an anchor early this week. The diver story, while more exciting, is likely BS.
How is this possible still? (Score:1)
What I can't understand is how, in this day in age of GPS navigation to almost the nearest inch, computerized navigation, maps, radar, etc, that on a ship like this it is even remotely possible to still drop anchor at or near one of this fiber optic lines and cut it with an anchor. No offense, but it seems a little silly that we can't solve this issue for once and for all in 2013.
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Quality navigation systems don't make a ship's crew give a damn. If clueless douchebags wanna drop anchor, the drop it.
To paraphrase Calvin, "You can present the coordinates, but you can't make me care."