Optical Fibre Company Repairs Undersea Cable Facility

By Deepak Kumar Jha, The Pioneer
September 9, 2019

In significant technological enhancement, a Delhi-based optical fibre cable company has successfully repaired the undersea internet cable facility to Sri Lanka which routed from India via Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu. The same cable to India has reached undersea carrying all the internet data and facility from Singapore.

The Paramount Communication Limited (PCL) became the first Indian company to work on the repairs of 330 kilometre Bharat Lanka Undersea Cable System (BLCS) connecting India- Sri Lanka since year 2006. The cable was damaged and met with fault near Tuticorin shores in February 2018.

Ideally for repairing submarine cables, dependencies and expertise lies only in Europe, UK and US as the repair of the undersea cable is a specialised operations that requires qualified jointers and testers.

“The cable fault was located at 5.8 km from Tuticorin beach manhole (BMH). The link is owned by a cable consortium comprising of Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) and Bharat Sanchar Nigam limited (BSNL). The link is very strategic in nature to carry Indian traffic to Sri Lanka and is an important link for India. We got the opportunity to repair the damages and we are glad to do it successfully within the territorial waters of Bay of Bengal,” said President (Strategy) of PCL Dhruv Aggarwal.

Aggarwal said the company repaired on the basis of their excellent Marine and Technical team. Apart from cable repair, the company also strengthened the BLCS cable system with protection mechanism by making a rock trench for five km and then cementing it.

It is seen for the first time in the submarine industry where such protection mechanism in 0 to 20 metre water depth on submarine cable has been deployed. Normally the area of 0 to 20 mtr water depth in shore is always been considered as a risky area as far as the cable damages due to external aggressions are concerned.