Earthquake Highlights Asian Dependency on Submarine Cables
January 08, 2007
A 7.1-magnitude earthquake just south of Taiwan knocked an unprecedented seven submarine communications cables out of service on December 26, impairing international communications to Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, China, Korea, and Singapore. Never before have so many cables been damaged simultaneously: of the nine cables that pass through the Luzon Strait, only two cables, Asia Netcom’s EAC and the older Guam-Philippines Cable, escaped damage.
Many observers have speculated that the cable outage has been exacerbated by a lack of investment in Asian cable infrastructure, or by Asian network capacity constraints. TeleGeography’s Submarine Cable Map 2007 dispels this myth: a diverse array of undersea cables connect the countries of Asia to one another and to the world. In the past year, three of these cable systems, Asia Netcom’s EAC, FLAG and REACH’s North Asia Loop and the APCN-2 consortium cable upgraded their networks’ capacity, in order to accommodate growing traffic volumes. However, even after these upgrades, most intra-Asian systems are operating at less than 15 percent of their potential capacities, leaving plenty of room for future traffic growth.
So how will telcos, ISPs, and enterprises protect themselves against future network outages in Asia? The upcoming deployment of new cables, such as the Trans Pacific Express and Asia American Gateway, will provide new routing options, helping to improve networks’ resiliency. While many buyers already purchase capacity on multiple cable systems to provide redundant capacity, network operators may procure capacity on an even more diverse array of cable systems in earthquake prone regions, and deploy fault-tolerante mesh networking technologies over these cables. Finally, these outages may increase interest in routing more capacity from Asia and Europe over the trans-Russia networks of Rostelecom and TransTeleCom.
To help present a complete picture of the submarine cables that connect the world, TeleGeography has released a new version of its submarine cable map. The Submarine Cable Map 2007, has been revised and updated to show over 80 major submarine cables of the world. The map includes detailed submarine cable landing insets and a number of new information graphics that show: when submarine cables started operations and their initial capacity, how submarine cables are constructed, the different protective layers that comprise a submarine cable, capacity growth across different routes, and many more. The new map will be available for pre-order now and will start shipping the second week of January.
