The offshore quake a couple of years back resulted in around 28 subsea cable repairs taking place over several months. Not seen/ heard anything regarding similar from yesterday’s disaster. Anyone else heard anything?
The nearest landing station is Kitaibaraki, which is appr. half way Tokyo and Sendai.
There are 4 main subsea cables in that area, mainly in the deeper part of the Pacific Ocean:
– 2x Tata PGN-Pacific
– PC-1
– Japan-USA
You can download a subsea cable map here (5MB, zipped).
I’ve checked a couple of telecom company websites in Japan, Asia and the US, but couldn’t find anything about broken subsea cables due to the recent earthquake in Japan.
Quote: Chunghwa Telecom yesterday said that the 8.9-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Japan has caused many submarine communications cables to break, adding that they are addressing the issue and will continue repairs to the cables until service returns to normal.
Thanks Ron. News is filtering through now. Having worked off Japan previously I know there are hundreds of cable systems around the islands both International and National. Many are ring and festoon systems so there’s built in redundancy which is possibly what is keeping things going for now.
PC-1 W and PC-1 N are currently out of service as a result of the Japanese earthquake. The Japanese cable landing station in Ajigaura has been evacuated due to the tsunami on the east coast of Japan and currently information on restoration activities and timing is unavailable. Further updates will be posted as additional information becomes available.
We have not been allowed to repair some cables in that area due to confusion from HSE and Japanese government 2 vessels now on stanby in Yokohama I was supposed to crew change onto one vessel this week for trenching in repaired cables but now all is on hold so i am being deployed to the Gulf
Also a problem is that many land stations and man holes have been damaged, have heard they don’t even know where to begin and repair the cables, and i don’t think that’s first priority right now, but look like a lot of work comming up
Tyco are now awaiting clearance and clarification from insurers and japanese government regarding cable repairs off japan vis a vis radiation pollution and also the Japs are in chaos and cable repairs are not the highest priority .
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