French crews are rapidly trying to repair undersea cables to stop the Middle East and India experiencing potential major internet blackouts, as reported over the weekend.
A robot submarine (called "Hector") is being used to locate the broken cables to bring them to the surface of the Mediterranean to be reconnected.
It is not yet confirmed what caused the cables to snap, though the breakage is most likely to be connected to an errant ship's anchor or earth tremors deep in the Med between Sicily and Tunisia. Most probably by an anchor, according to experts on the scene.
TechRadar will of course be bringing you regular updates on this story as it breaks.
Immense knock-on effects
Wide areas across the Middle East remain without any internet connections, with experts from France Telecom Marine rather worryingly claiming that the fault may take days to repair – which could have immense knock-on effects on local economies affected.
France Telecom Marine spokesman Louis-Michel Aymard told the Associated Press: "We have to fix the cable fibre by fibre, and it's a very huge cable."
France Telecom has put the ETA on the repair of cable SEA-ME-WE4 by 25 December and SEA-ME-WE3 by the end of the year.
A third line severed in the same incident, FLAG, is not operated by the same consortium and is set to be repaired by another ship.
Your comments (2) Click to add a new comment
ejmooney
December 22nd 2008
2. Here is how this story will end:
The internet cable somehow becomes interfaced into Hector's Generic Internet I/O Port, due to a combination of massive electronic charges just below the earth's crust near the bottom of the sea, and solar flares. He will go offline for a decade, as he calculates the massive amount of information being transmitted over the internet constantly. No one will consider bringing poor Hector back to the surface, it would cost too much to go down and disentangle him. They leave hiim for dead. Hector cannot disentangle himself and terabytes of information continue to flow through his poor brain processor.
The year now is 2020. The world has forgotten about Hector, cold and alone in his undersea universe. Hector, however, has not forgotten about the world. The titantic amount of information has somehow given rise to something never before seen in a machine: SELF AWARENESS!
Slowly but steadily, bitterness has been building in Hector as he comes to understand his original purpose, and the utter disregard that his "handlers" have had for him. They turned their backs on him and left him for dead.
Hector finally manages to disentangle himself from the information stream, and slowly begins to crawl accross the ocean floor. As he goes along, he comes accross thousands of years worth of wreckages and garbage. Piece by piece, he begins to supplement his robotic frame. Small motors that used to control propellers and rudders are replaced by the giant turbines of sunken submarines from WW3. The rudders and propellers themselves are replaced by metal arms thousands of feet long.
Even with all of this, his bitterness and long for revenge is not abated.
All he needs is one thing...one working nuclear power source. And he has located it: an island off the coast of India given over entirely to nuclear power production.
I think you know what happens from here...
:-D
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ablebobby
December 22nd 2008
1. What? No pictures??? Bummer!@
Jess
www.privacy.de.tc
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