By Richard Chirgwin, The Register
September 5, 2017
Typhoons have broken four submarine cables in the crowded Asian sea-lanes, with a knock-on impact for Australian ISPs iiNet and Internode.
The four damaged cables are ASE (Asia Submarine-Cable Express), TGA-Intra Asia (TGA-IA), Asia-American Gateway (AAG) and SEA-ME-WE3 (SMW3).
SMW3 connects Perth to Singapore; ASE and TGA-IA are intra-Asia cables, while ASE connects various Asian landings to California.
According to Malaysia's The Star, the cables were damaged by two typhoons in late August: Hato, which left three dead in Macau after hitting Hong Kon; and Pakhar, which swept through the same region a few days later.
IiNet's outage notice says it's being impacted by the SMW3 break, and a second break “~54k off the coast of Hong Kong” which could be any one of the other three, since they all have a Hong Kong landing.
The cable owners expect repairs to take well into October, depending on the availability of repair vessels and how long it takes to locate the breaks.
