Incredible undersea cable scenario


Written by Phil on September 29, 2008 in Books, Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery, Emergency Response, Testing.

Incredible undersea cable scenario

by Nathaniel Forbes, ZDNet Asia

At 08:00 on Wednesday morning January 30, 2008, two ships 2,500 kilometers (1,600 miles) apart in the Mediterranean drop their anchors in stormy weather off Alexandria, Egypt, and Marseilles, France, at the same time. They both manage to drop their anchors directly onto two separate undersea cables buried 50 centimeters in the sand, each roughly the diameter of your wrist.

The two cables carry 75 percent of network traffic in the Middle East and South Asia. Your business in India or Egypt loses over half its international data and voice network capacity.

Two days later on Friday morning, February 1, a third cable is severed by an abandoned anchor embedded in the sea floor off the coast of Dubai, also 2,500 kilometers (1600 miles) from Alexandria, but in a different direction. That cable is owned by the Indian company that also owns one of the cables broken earlier.

Your voice and data networks are now crawling at just 25 percent of capacity. A spokesman for your business in India or Egypt calls it a “national disaster”.

Then two days later on Sunday Feb. 3, a fourth cable goes down, this time between the UAE and Qatar, from a power failure. Egypt’s Ministry of Communications announces, after a review of video footage, that the first cable break off Alexandria was not caused by a ship’s anchor, but offers no other explanation.

Incredible undersea cable scenario

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So, what was that about exercising your contingency plan…? A valuable book on exercising contingency plans is Disaster Recovery Testing: Exercising Your Contingency Plan, Philip Jan Rothstein, FBCI, Editor.

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