MainOne submarine cable back online after repairs
The operators of the MainOne submarine cable system say that repairs of the damaged undersea cable have completed and the system is again in service. The submarine network, which serves West Africa, suffered a fault June 18 that knocked it out of service (see "MainOne submarine cable battles outage").
The final repair splice took place on Sunday morning, July 2. Subsequent tests confirmed the submarine network was again in good operating condition.
"The submarine cable fault was in a known area of ridges in the seabed, at a location 3400 meters water depth in the international waters outside Senegal," according to MainOne CEO Funke Opeke. "After we discovered the outage and isolated the fault to a location 3000 km south of Portugal, our operational processes and disaster recovery plans worked as expected and we deployed a repair vessel from our membership in the Atlantic Cable and Maintenance Agreement which left France by 8 am on Monday, June 19, 2017.
"The vessel travelled to Portland, UK, where it picked up critical spares and then journeyed to the repair location which was further isolated to within a 2-km range while the vessel was in transit," Opeke continued. "We have concluded a full repair of the submarine cable with a final splice yesterday, Sunday July 2, 2017. The cable has been tested to be in good operating condition and we have since restored all our customer's services to normal operating conditions."
The outage was the first in the submarine cable system's seven-year history. MainOne and its associated undersea cable systems connect West Africa with Europe (see "Pioneer Consulting awarded MainOne contract").
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Stephen Hardy | Editorial Director and Associate Publisher
Stephen Hardy has covered fiber optics for more than 15 years, and communications and technology for more than 30 years. He is responsible for establishing and executing Lightwave's editorial strategy across its digital magazine, website, newsletters, research and other information products. He has won multiple awards for his writing.
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