Internet Service Interrupted This Weekend
by Rod Hughes
Internet service to more than a million users was interrupted for more than 72 hours this weekend, due to a break in the ARCOS undersea fiber optic cable serving the United States, Central America, the Caribbean, Venezuela and Colombia, reported the daily newspaper La Nacion.
Columbus Networks, the operator, managed to replace five kilometers of submarine cable off the Punto Fijo station in Venezuela.
A spokesman for the firm told the paper that since 2005, the company has been replacing the vulnerable original cable with one double-armored with steel. Instead of resting on the seabed as the original did, the new cable is laid in a trench three meters (10 ft.) deep. But not all of the old cable has been replaced in the Caribbean, the spokesman added.
Elberth Duran, spokesman for the Costa Rican Electrical Institute (ICE) and its Internet specialist subsidiary, RACSA, confirmed that the failure has been fully repaired in the ARCOS cable but that another cable serving Costa Rica, Maya, is still undergoing repairs in the Maria Chiquita sector of Panama. ICE (its acronym in Spanish) is the government monopoly supplier of Internet service and electricity in this country.
The NEC Corporation that owns Maya is obligated to guarantee Internet service to this country, continued Duran, even if NEC has to connect with other fiber optic cables to do so.