Cable Damage Cuts Asian Telecoms

NEW YORK, Feb. 13 -- A damaged fiber optic cable serving China disrupted telephone and Internet service throughout Asia one day last week. According to an Associated press report, Dave Johnson, a spokesman for AT&T Network Services, said the failure occurred in an underwater cable between Chongming, China, and Pusan, South Korea. He said the cable is operated by an international consortium of about a dozen telecommunications companies, including AT&T.
Although the cable is not a trans-Pacific link, Johnson said, it may be part of a loop that connects the region to that link. The outage affected some calls within the region, including Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong, as well as calls between China and the US if they used that particular link, Johnson said. He said most calls from the US were going through normally.