Slashdot Mirror

Here's a clip from an ABC item on this story. . .

Undersea cable damage is hardly rare--indeed, more than 50 repair operations were mounted in the Atlantic alone last year, according to marine cable repair company Global Marine Systems. But last week's breaks came at one of the world's bottlenecks, where Net traffic for whole regions is funneled along a single route.

The language used by this ABC staffer seems soft to me. --A repair job doesn't necessarily mean a cut cable or a complete loss of service. A subsea internet cable is packed not only with glass fiber, but also with a high-voltage electrical line used to power the numerous optical repeaters needed to keep a signal strong. Such units, I would would imagine, are subject to failure from time to time, necessitating irregular maintenance. But whatever the case. . .

I remain in two minds about whether or not some of these latest breaks were deliberate. It would appear that there is enough regular repair necessary to keep more than one company busy. --600 employees just for Global Marine Systems. (Who also lays cable as well as providing a variety of subsea cable services.) The Japanese also host a subsea cable company which was sent out to perform repair work on a 2001 break in a U.S.-China cable, (the cause of which, according to the article I found, was unclear at the time). Now, I have mentioned, (much to the distress of many Slashdotters), that we're currently in the middle of a Mercury retrograde, during which we can expect to see all kinds of communication slow-downs and tangles in ways which might otherwise appear too coincidental for comfort. These things happen, and it can look at the time as though some not-so-benevolent god is on your case, though I tend to think of it more as just bad weather in the probability spectrum.

However, people have also pointed out several reasons to squint suspiciously and pay closer attention to these cable-breakage events. There is no doubt that governments do indeed have the ability to play spy versus spy with cables, and it would be foolish to suggest that the idea of tactical cable breaking had never crossed their minds. (As such, I must disagree with the parent poster's snide position with regard to conspiracy theory, despite the fact that many do tend to engage in such thoughts with a measure of over-eagerness). --We are all well aware of the high pressure politics in the Middle East and the volatility of the U.S. incumbent leadership. Also, there is also the uncomfortable item pointed out by the Egyptian government that at least two of the breaks happened under monitored tracts of sea, and that there had been no ships in those waters during the times of the breaks, suggesting something else. Maybe a submarine? Or maybe just a repeater on the fritz.

Who knows? The ocean is a harsh place and any number of possibilities come to mind. Perhaps an old WWII depth charge finally decided to pop. Whatever the case, I think this is one of those times when it will pay to watch and see what unfolds before jumping to political conclusions.

It's not as though we can really do anything else. I'm sort of holding my breath to see if there will be a sixth breakage before the weekend.

-FL