Connecting Asian Internet optical fiber with technology of the century ... 19

People are using a 19th-century technology to fix cable breakdown in the waters off Taiwan - "Asian telecom disaster" of the 21st century digital age!

Sailors on ships outside southern Taiwan are dragging long sections of rope with hook anchors on the seabed to restore the broken fiber cable after the December 26 earthquake.

Mr. John Walters, General Manager of Global Marine, one of the repair firms, said: ' No electronic devices are used here. It's just a traditional and ancient technology . '

The tail of the ship is being tasked with connecting fiber optic cable in Taiwan sea using technology from the 19th century. Photo: AFP .

Millions of people in Taiwan, China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Australia have all suffered the same 'catastrophe' of Internet problems when the underground cable connects Asia with the United States and other countries. broken. Telecommunications service providers had to find temporary remedies while repairs were urgently underway.

' At this time, no cable has been repaired yet. I mean the cables on the seabed at a depth of about 4000 meters (equivalent to 2.5 miles) . "Walters said.

As part of the repair work, in addition to four other firms 'vessels, Walters' Global Marine 'contributed' two repair ships in the Bashi and Luzon Straits, between Taiwan and the Philippines. Both ships were designed specifically for underground cable repair, longer than 100 meters and carrying about 60 British employees and Filipino crew.

According to Walters, this force will work 24 hours a day but the weather may slow down. Currently a ship is waiting for the high wind (intensity 30 to 40 miles per hour) to subside in the Bashi canal area. These powerful winds have pushed high waves to 10 to 12 meters. Global Marine's other unit is closer to Taiwan and has begun to repair.

After reaching the incident area, the expert team surveyed the seabed, assessing the current status and level of sediment mobilization here. Next is the task of familiar devices. People use a long rope with hook anchors, drop to the bottom of the sea and drag on it until the strain gauge indicates on the ship that the hook has met the cable.

The size of today's fiber optic cables is only 21mm in diameter. ' You can understand how hard we are doing, the main problem is the speed of the cable ship ,' said Walters, who has 17 years of age.

The anchor hook attached to the end of the rope is an instrument about 18x24 inches (about 46x61cm) in size, consisting of a piece-cutting knife such as a razor blade and a part to 'pick' the cable. The rope is stretched gradually and the cable will slowly lift up, then the anchor cuts the cables, grabs them and takes that half out of the water.

According to Mr. Walter, the total time to just drop anchor hooks and pull on the sea and recover a cable takes about 16 hours. He said: ' It is a method that has been tested and proven effective '.

After putting one end of the broken cable on the deck, people removed the scrapes from the ends of the broken strands, rechecked, sealed and melted that part. Next, this cable head is attached to a float on the water while waiting for the repair process to be repeated with the other half. In the end, people put two pieces of cable together and dropped it back to the sea floor.

Even before the incident on the Gift-giving Day (December 26), Global Marine had a year of work with about 20 repairs with sailors and anchors like this. Walters said all of his cable assemblies had to use that kind of 'old' anchor technology.

In fact, Global Marine also has remote control devices, like underwater robots, but these devices do not work at depths below 2000m and are often used to carry cables that are repaired at shallow water level. than. Besides, those devices are not faster than anchors.

Global Walters is a UK-based repair company with a long history, it was born in 1850, the time when the first international underground cable was established between Britain and France.

Walters said that the design of anchor hooks has been much reformed over the past century, so it helps conditional repair companies choose a variety of tools depending on the seabed topography.

Normally repairing a cable takes about 7 days but this time, most companies are expected to take 10 days. Therefore, with 8 separate underground cable systems in the waters off Taiwan and nearly 18 breakages caused by earthquakes, the repair work will be very time consuming. Mr. Walters said: ' We estimate to complete this whole work will have to reach the end of February .'

Do Duong