Stolen Undersea Fibre-optic Cable

[drake]

A 98-kilometer segment of the TVH fiber-optic cable responsible for transmitting large volumes of data for landline systems and the Internet was stolen off the Ca Mau coast. Bui Thien Minh, deputy director of state-run Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group (VNPT), one of the owners, said repairs were estimated to cost US$2.6 million.

Together with SMW3, the other undersea fiber-optic cable, the damaged network accounted for 82 percent of all data transmitted from and to Vietnam. The rest is transmitted by three land cables and a satellite system.

Minh said if part of SMW3 too was stolen Vietnam would be cut off from the outside world. The Internet would collapse first.

Even more pessimistic was Lam Quoc Cuong, deputy director of VTI, a VNPT subsidiary responsible for operating the two sea cables, who said “there is no effort to ensure that that the remaining sea cable is not stolen”.

It could be stolen at any time, he warned.

Nguyen Xuan Tru, deputy head of the Ministry of Posts and Telematics’ telecommunication department, said the situation was “extremely serious”.

CAT, a Thai company that invested 45 percent of the cost of the TVH cable, said its experts estimated it would cost $2.6 million to repair the cable.

Asean Explorer, a Singaporean ship specializing in cable repair hired by VNPT to survey the problem, said the repairs would take 88 days.

Minh said this could take much longer due to paperwork, especially for permission for the vessel to operate in Vietnamese waters.

Cuong said there were only three ships capable of repairing fiber-optic cables in the entire Indian and Pacific Oceans.

In related news, firms from 10 countries including Vietnam, the US, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore, are teaming up to lay a 20,000 km, $500 million AAG cable to connect Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, with the US.

It is expected to be finished by October 2008.

[nonthaburial]

how the heck can anyone steal 98Kms of heavy cable. Its not feasible unless they had all the required lifting equipment etc !!!!

[bdenner]

The service provider and their technical department must have been asleep for a week to allow so much cable to be retrived un-noticed.

[cdnvic]

The service provider and their technical department must have been asleep for a week to allow so much cable to be retrived un-noticed.

Maybe they contracted that part out to TOT.

[nikster]

how the heck can anyone steal 98Kms of heavy cable. Its not feasible unless they had all the required lifting equipment etc !!!!

I can't imagine this either.

98km of cable?? Wouldn't that take at least several days to steal? And a huge boat to store it on? Surely somebody would notice when half the communications goes down?

[Firefoxx]

It's hard to steal even 1km of cable, let alone 98 frickin KM of it. Someone's head is gonna roll, and roll HARD for this. "It could be stolen at any time"??????? What kind of lame-o brain-dead statement is that? What I'm not surprised is that CAT is involved in something fishy like this.

Read some more, and it said that the cable weighs more than 100 tons. You'd need some serious time and effort to pull off something like this. And what can thieves do with fiber optic cable? Open their own cable TV company?

Edited June 2, 2007 by Firefoxx

[george]

They got the thieves: LOL

http://www.thanhniennews.com/society/?cati...mp;newsid=28390

[alexth]

I was just preparing to go and make some inquiries about some 2nd hand fiber optic cable in Panthip. I was thinking that maybe there was a good business to be done

Edited June 2, 2007 by alexth

[sensei]

How could anyone easily get away with 98 KILOMETERS of cable?

"Cuong said there were only three ships capable of repairing fiber-optic cables in the entire Indian and Pacific Oceans."

Only three ships are capable of laying down such a wire, but apparently, a pirate's tugboat was able to lift it from the seabed with ease.

Mighty strange, I'd say.

Any telecom network would have instantly noticed their cable being severed somewhere...

Strange...

Edited June 2, 2007 by sensei

[Macx]

There is money to be made in the theft.

But, there is more money to be made in the repair/replacement.

If the VN gov were more serious, they might actually look in-house.