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Ship Anchor Damages African Undersea Cables

Posted by Soulskill on from the have-you-tried-turning-it-off-and-then-on-again dept.

New submitter Bastian227 writes "A ship anchoring in a restricted area disrupted an East African high-speed Internet connection. The damaged fiber optic cable is one of three new undersea cables in the area off Kenyan coast. Repairs could take up to 14 days. 'The Teams cable had been rerouting data from three other cables severed 10 days ago in the Red Sea between Djibouti and the Middle East. Together, the four fiber-optic cables channel thousands of gigabytes of information per second and form the backbone of East Africa's telecom infrastructure. Telecom companies were reeling over the weekend as engineers attempted to reroute data south along the East African coast and around the Cape of Good Hope.'"

5 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. Thousands of gigabytes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Together, the four fiber-optic cables channel thousands of gigabytes of information per second

    They're called petabytes.

    1. Re:Thousands of gigabytes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      No sir. They are called terabytes.

    2. Re:Thousands of gigabytes by mooingyak · · Score: 3, Informative

      Together, the four fiber-optic cables channel thousands of gigabytes of information per second

      They're called petabytes.

      Petabytes would be millions of gigabytes. For this one we go with terabytes.

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  2. Re:yay by arbiter1 · · Score: 3, Informative

    unfortunately its wrong cable that was snapped according to the map. http://www.cablemap.info/

  3. Re:Three others in the area severed 10 days ago? by Fluffeh · · Score: 5, Informative

    where's that quote about never ascribing something to conspiracy where idiocy will suffice

    It is Hanlon's Razor, though it says to never attribute to malice that what can easily be explained by stupidity.

    I would say that an undersea cable being cut isn't newsworth on its own, but cut a bunch in the same place in roughly the same time and it becomes news. The cables are cut all the time (I do wonder if the ship that cuts the cable has to pay the bill for repairs?) but a lot of the time it is possible to simply re-route and there isn't too much hassle.

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