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Japanese fiber optic cable falls
The fiber optic network of undersea cables that connect Japan to the rest of the world was damaged when the earthquake struck beneath the Pacific seafloor, about 200 kilometers from Japan's northeast coast. On the afternoon of March 11th, 2011, Mitsuyoshi Hirai, the chief engineer of the cable maintenance ship Ocean Link, was sitting in his cabin 20 miles off Japan's eastern coast, completing the paperwork that comes at the end of every repair. Two weeks earlier, something — you rarely knew what —. An undersea cable on the seabed is critical infrastructure underpinning a global internet network. The Wall Street Journal reports that many telecom operators have battled service. Japan--Following the massive earthquake and resulting tsunami in Japan on Friday, major telecom operators scrambled to minimize the impact of damage to several fiber-optic submarine cables. The task of maintaining and repairing these vital lifelines falls to NTT Group 's cable-laying vessel, Kizuna.
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