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Bloomberg News Service
New York — A Japanese ship is searching for the malfunctioning undersea cable that carries about 20 percent of Internet traffic between Asia and the U.S., according to a spokeswoman for Concert, which sells phone services to corporations.
Concert, a venture between AT&T Corp. and British Telecommunications Plc, and other phone companies such as WorldCom Inc. said they have rerouted their data to prevent delays. The problem is thought to be a cut or "tight bend" in the cable, which would prevent data from getting through, said Concert spokeswoman Tracey Belko. The breakdown began at 5 p.m. New York time last Thursday.
Consumers in Asia have had to wait as much as eight times longer than usual for access to international Web sites, according to Keynote Systems Inc., which monitors Web performance. Internet users in Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Korea are affected, Belko said.
"It’s pretty essential to have this working well to make sure people get access," said Randy Zadra, president of Orblynx Inc., a Fairfax, Virginia-based company that helps distribute Internet content using satellites. "For some sites, (consumers) couldn’t get access to them and many others were slowed down by this cable cut."
How quickly the cable can be repaired will depend on the weather, the depth of the water and the cause of the problem, Belko said. Concert hopes to have the cable restored within two weeks, she said. The cable could have been broken by a sharp object on the bottom of the sea, fish biting the line or a boat cutting it, Zadra said.
The cable was installed by a group of more than a dozen companies, including WorldCom, Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. and Sprint Corp., and started operating in January 2000, Belko said.
The malfunction had the biggest impact on Singapore, according to San Mateo, California-based Keynote Systems. It took about 67.54 seconds to get access to Keynote’s "Business 40 sites" after the breakdown, up from 7.8 seconds Wednesday, according to spokesman Dan Berkowitz. Keynote Business 40 measures the performance of 40 popular Web sites such as Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corp.’s site.
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