Indian submarine cable companies, including Tata Communications and Reliance Communications, re-routed at least 300-400 Gigabytes of internet traffic over both own and consortium cable networks between the Chinese mainland, Asia and Europe following the recent Taiwanese earthquake that disrupted communications across Asia and the Chinese mainland.
A powerful earthquake off the Taiwan coast knocked off international undersea fibre-optic cables on August 12. Half a dozen undersea cable systems were severed, including Asia-Pacific Cable Network 2 (APCN2). This was the most serious cable disruption since 2001, when a submarine cable connecting the mainland with the US was cut off.
The disruption had also affected international voice calls from the region and communications in Asia, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Japan.
Ariane Moyes, vice-president at Tata Communications said around 50-100 gigabytes were re-routed for the quake-affected region overnight and a lot more after. According to a Reliance Communications (Rcom) spokesperson, the company re-routed over 100 gigabytes during the first week itself and a lot more during the next couple of weeks.
Tata Communications moved traffic from the disrupted cables on to its TGN Intra-Asia cable and other cable systems in Asia, Europe and across the Pacific.
Rcom had re-routed traffic over its Flag-Europe-Asia cable system for the quake-affected region.