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I've wondered how many boats/subs exist for these repairs and if attempting to do them all in parallel is going to be a big problem. With 6 systems having outages, it will be interesting to see when various paths/systems come back online and if there is a gating factor in underseas repair gear being available in the region.
Just to give you an idea: (from http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/12/27/taiwan.quake.ap/index.html) (c)2006 AP Tyco International Ltd. said it has a Taiwan-based cable-laying ship heading to the area for repairs. "Pretty much everything south of Taiwan has been reported at fault," said Frank Cuccio, vice president of marine services at Morristown, New Jersey-based Tyco Telecommunications. Cuccio expects the ship to be in position in a few days. It then takes three to five days to repair each cable, but mudslides set off by the earthquake can complicate matters by covering the cables, making them harder to retrieve from the bottom. Cuccio said the ruptures are more than 10,800 feet below sea level, too deep for the remote-controlled submersibles that otherwise would find the cables. Instead, the ship will drag grapnels along the bottom to find them. The cables on the deep ocean floor are just two-thirds of an inch, a testament both to the immense data capacity of optical fiber and the fragility of the links that form the global telecommunications network.
- jared
Randy