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Shut
out of cyberspace In desperation his company had to turn to another Systems Provider who made available a satellite connection. "Fortunately this occurred during an off peak season. It was nevertheless inconvenient," he told The Sunday Times. Azmie's employers and many others, including individual clients were among 800,000 Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) subscribers who were shut out of cyberspace for six days, because a submarine cable located 10kms away from Mount Lavinia had been ruptured on August 22. In this modern age of technology, that it took six days for the SLT to put things right was bad enough but in addition they had not only forced some of their clients to turn to other systems providers, but many clients suffered loss of business. If this clearly highlighted the unpreparedness of the SLT to cope with an emergency situation, what followed in the days after the breakdown was worse. The SLT accused a foreign vessel, Merchant Vessel (MV) 'State of Nagaland' for causing damage to the underwater cable. On Monday (23) Sri Lanka Telecom filed action in the Colombo High Court seeking the detention of the ship and claiming damages amounting to Rs.500 million. High Court Judge Sarath Ambeypitiya ordered the detention of the vessel. The date of the case had been fixed for September 6. However within three days, SLT had to eat its own words. The Indian MV 'State of Nagaland' had requested the Navy to release the ship on the grounds of the failure to produce adequate evidence against the ship. Navy spokesman Commodore Jayantha Perera, told The Sunday Times that they were informed by the SLT that they would be withdrawing the case filed the as there was not enough evidence. The Navy had then released the ship. With the lack of evidence SLT has been left with a situation where they have not been able to trace the persons or vessel that could have caused the damage. This would mean that Telecom would have to bear the damages for the loss of traffic and goodwill, which they had earlier planned to claim from the 'State of Nagaland'. According A. W. Weerakoon, Director merchant shipping ‘M.V. State of Nagaland’ had been in the locality on August 20 and had moved into territorial waters the next day. This led to the belief that the ship was involved in the mishap. But this was contradicted by the spokesperson for Indian High Commission Nagma Mallik, who told The Sunday Times that the ship 'State of Nagaland' never entered Sri Lankan territorial waters. She also added that international insurance companies that conducted a probe on the incident had found that the particular vessel could not have damaged the SMWIII (SEA-ME-WEIII) submarine cables. Other sources in Merchant Shipping say they cannot determine which of the vessels present in the area could have damaged the cables. On Friday (27) investigations were still continuing to find out who or what could have caused the damage. The breakdown of SMWIII cable system was detected on August 22, (Sunday) at 01:40 a.m. and the failure resulted in the disruption of international telephone services and total failure of Internet services along the line. However, SLT restored the international telephone services via SMW II and satellite services on the same day and services to key business customers who operate communication lines [International Private Leased Lines (IPLC)] on SMW III were also restored. SLT's connection to the Internet fibre optic backbone is through the Mount Lavinia landing point of Segment S4 of undersea SMW-III, (South East Asia- Middle East - Western Europe) fibre optic cable link managed by the French and Singapore telecom. The S4 segment, which powers Sri Lanka, also runs through Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar and India. The SMW-III network supports 40GBPS bandwidth with two fibre pairs covering 41 landing points in 35 countries. As tens of thousands of subscribers continued to be affected on Tuesday, a cable repair ship manned by both SLT personnel and a SMW III repair teams set sail to the site. With suspected multiple damages been made to the fibre, the team worked hard despite the South West monsoon prevailing in the waters to restore services. On Wednesday (25), the cable was hauled and moved to the ship to localize the fault and test the line. The restoration process was reportedly more complex than expected as it had to be carried out without interrupting other SMW III traffic, which had increased due to the high usage of the cable due to the on going Olympic Games. However, how the damage was caused to the cable still remains a mystery, after there was insufficient evidence to prove that ‘MV State of Nagaland' was responsible for it. Mahinda Herat, General Manager, International Services, Sri Lanka Telecom, says that a ship may have anchored in a restricted area and the anchor could have got entangled with the cable. “Thereafter, if the ship attempted to pull out of the harbour, dragging the cable with it, it could have resulted in damaging the cable," he explained. However, he's not sure if this has been the case in this incident as the cable repair team has yet to complete its analysis of the cable, to determine the actual cause and extent of the damage. The cost of repairs once determined would be borne by the SMWIII Consortium, he said. The Consortium consists of 90 signatories of operators around the world, Mr. Herat said. However, the loss of traffic and goodwill amounting to about Rs. 500 million will have to be borne by SLT, he added. SMWIII, (an optical fibre cable) has two contingency systems that work on a load-sharing basis, where in a case of an emergency, services can be shared between both SMWII and the satellite, he said. However, due to technological and capacity disparities between the two cables, SMWIII couldn't be fully restored by either of the two back up systems, he said. Commenting on remedial steps he said, SLT had already subscribed to obtaining SMWIV, a high capacity cable, which, should be commissioned by September next year. This high capacity cable would avoid the recurrence of any breakdowns. As the SLT tries to determine the party responsible for the damage and looks to the introduction of backup systems there were business establishments and individuals who were looking to switch to other servers. We spoke to some establishments that were affected by the breakdown of the SLT cable. Hasitha Premaratne of HNB Stock Brokers (Pvt) Ltd., told The Sunday Times that the breakdown had minimal effect on the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) and was negligible. As the bourse was not internet-based, trading of stocks wasnot hindered although the damage had had an impact on the quality of services provided. However Mr. Premaratne said that it had an effect on foreign investors, as some had been unable to contact their local stockbrokers. Describing how Gabo Travels (Pvt) Ltd., coped with the breakdown, IT Manager, Hassan Ali, said their e-mail was not affected as they used a different service provider to obtain e-mail access. However their Internet access was hindered severely. Therefore, they had to re-direct their day-to-day Internet operations too, via a substitute service provider. Dr. Ruvan Weerasinghe, Head of the University of Colombo School of Computing said that the Lanka Education And Research Network (LEARN), which connects universities around the country had other links. "When the breakdown occurred we moved all our traffic to our other ISPs," he said. "Some universities that were only connected to SLT without going through LEARN found themselves in the lurch," Dr. Weerasinghe said. The damage to the vital cable has left behind a trail of questions. One of them has been how a ship managed to anchor in a 'so called' anchor prohibited area and how it had gone unnoticed by both the Navy and Port authorities. If
the Indian vessel wasn't the guilty party, then the actual perpetrator
has to be found and held responsible for the damages both to the
cable and to the country. If not, how does SLT plan to cough up
Rs. 500 million to cover losses? |
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