Breakage on South-East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 3 telecom cable, restored

A breakage on the South-East Asia - Middle East - Western Europe 3, an optical submarine telecommunications cable linking those regions, was reported here but got restored few hours back, a senior Kerala government officer said Tuesday night.

Kerala IT Secretary M Sivasankar told PTI that SE-ME-WE3 breakage happened Tuesday at Kundannoor here during a construction work.

He said there was a cut on the terrestrial path of SE-ME-WE3 from 2.30 pm to 7 pm at Kundannoor here.

It was down for four to five hours, but local customers were not much affected as SAFE (The South Africa Far East cable an optical fiber submarine communications cable linking Melkbosstrand, South Africa to Penang, Malaysia) was also connected to Kochi, he said.

Chennai and Mumbai lines are also connected to Kochi, so there was not much problem, the officer said.

SE-ME-WE3 is shared by international network providers like AT&T and others, so it might have affected them, they said.

Officials said it seems their Mumbai-Singapore link was broken.

VSNL and Reliance telecommunication service providers were affected.

"But, since VSNL have safety lines, Internet services was not affected. By 5 pm, they (the services) were restored. Reliance services also fully restored by 7 pm," an official said.