KOCHI: The world’s longest underground-undersea communication cable linking South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe (SEA-ME-WE-3) was accidentally severed during the repair works carried out by the Kerala Water Authority (KWA) at Kundannoor here. One cable out of the total three, plus the SEA-ME-3’s Junction Box, was damaged when trenching was carried out to fix a major pipeline leak.
Ninety-two telecom companies of various nations are stakeholders in the project. “The cable services remained disrupted for six-and-a-half hours. In the case of stakeholders, who do not have any backup, the Internet blackout was total while in most places the connectivity must have been very slow,” said a VSNL officer.
The optical fibre network which got ruptured begins from Germany and extends to Europe, the Gulf region and Asian countries, including India, and ends in Japan. The 39,000 km-long cable which has 39 landing points - starting from Norden in Germany and ending at Okinawa in Japan - has two landing points in India - Kochi and Mumbai.
Not the first time
This is not the first time the SEA-ME-WE-3 has got severed here. Earlier, during the highway construction, the cable got cut at Kumbalam and Kannadikkadu. Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL), which is in charge of SEA-ME-WE-3 cable in India, deployed in-house experts to fix the problem overnight.