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Japanese Ship Arrives at Shanghai on Undersea Cable Repair Mission
A Japanese "KDD Ocean Link" ship, on its mission to repair the severed US-China undersea fiber optic cable, arrived at Shanghai on Wednesday morning.
It will leave for the accident site early Thursday morning after loading some necessary repair materials in Shanghai and will reach the site later on that same day.
A China Telecom source said earlier that if everything goes well, the cable will be restored on February 23.
Liu Shaokuan, a senior engineer with Shanghai Telecom, said that the damage occurred some 375 km east of the Chongming cable station in Shanghai, and the water there is about 70 m in depth.
"If the weather is OK, if only one part of the cable is damaged and if the repair license can be issued in time, the repair work will finish on February 23," Liu said.
According to the cable maintenance zoning method, the accident site is within the Yokohama (Japan) repair zone, which has three repair ships belonging to Japan, China and ROK, and it is the Japanese ship's turn to do the job this time.
Two staff from the China Submarine Cable Construction Co. will be on board the ship to supervise the repair job on behalf of China Telecom.
On February 9 the 40 Gbps (gigabits per second) north route of the US-China undersea cable was damaged, but the cause of the damage is still unclear.
A China Telecom source said that it has taken a series of immediate measures since the breakdown and some form of communications, particularly the audio communications have been restored through bypass and satellite routes.
However, Internet traffic routes to north America have not yet been restored to the normal level, the source told Xinhua.
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