Cables restoration begins; internet to be slow till Friday

Slow internet connections will continue till Friday even as restoration work on two cables out of the three that had severed a few days ago is under way.

A cable-repairing ship is already at the severed location of the consortium cable SEA-ME-WE-4 (SMW-4). The cable is expected to be restored by December 26, sources close to the development have told Business Standard.

However, work on the other consortium cable, SEA-ME-WE-3, will start only after the work on SMW-4 is over. In India, the latency will continue till the end of the week, even for customers who have opted for redundancy bandwidth. For those who did not opt for redundancy bandwidth, the latency would be higher till the restoration, they added.

The ship, Teliri, has been assigned to conduct the repair work on the FEA (Flag Europe Asia) cable, owned by Flag Telecom (a subsidiary of Reliance Globalcom). The ship is on its way to the spot and the repair work is expected to be complete by Friday, according to Reliance Globalcom. However, this was subject to weather conditions, the company added.

According to PK Saji, senior vice-president (global infrastructure operations technology) of Sify Technologies, all trans-Atlantic traffic to India has been re-routed through the Pacific cable systems. These include Tata Indicom Cable, i2i (owned by Bharti) and SMW-4’s trans-Pacific leg.

“Even though the traffic has been re-routed, there will be a latency of around 40-60 milliseconds for customers buying bandwidth from Sify,” he admitted. Nasdaq-listed Sify buys bandwidth on five major submarine cables landing in India and re-sells in the country.

The cuts are reported on multiple submarine cables including SMW-4, SMW-3, Go and FEA between Alexandria (Egypt) and Palermo (Italy) in the Mediterranean region after a ship had reportedly dropped its anchor on them.

Tata Communications (formerly VSNL), is the only Indian consortium partner for SMW-3, while Tata Communications and Bharti Airtel are partners on SMW-4. Both the companies are also landing partners for the cables in India, with landing stations in Mumbai and Chennai.