Luzon Strait 2006 disaster not an isolated case

THE EARTHQUAKE which hit the Luzon Strait off Taiwan on Boxing Day 2006 exposed a massive weak spot in Asia's Internet connectivity. But submarine cable experts, Asia Netcom, have identified three other places where the web is equally exposed.

According to Asia Netcom CEO, Bill Barney, there are similar weak points in the Adriatic next to Italy and in the seas off both Chile and Japan. In each case cables are sharing the same ocean 'trenches' and the location is susceptible to possible earthquakes.

The financial implications of web outages are hard to calculate but Asia Netcom has prepared to give it a go. It says the whole of South Asia basically went off line.

The combined GDP of Taiwan, Hong Kong and China togehter is approximately $7.56 billion dollars per day. Those countries were hardest hit when six out of seven undersea cables snapped during the earthquake, but it also affected communications with Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, South Korea and Singapore.

Part of the problem, according to Barney, was that ISPs were operating their networks at something like 80-90 per cent of their full capacity. So there wasn't much spare capacity to cope.

Asia Netcom reckons it got 100 Gbps of capacity back up and running after a break in service of around 12 hours. But that left the area short of around 500 Gbps.

"We got to play God for a few hours," Bill Barney claimed. He reckons that the fact Asia Netcom had three points of entry into Taiwan - not just one, is what saved the day.

Barney also made some very interesting remarks as to how much his company is actually worth. The company was sold to VCs back in August 2006 for a mere $402 million. Within 70 days, the company had been approached with an offer of between $1 billion - $1.2 billion and turned it down.

So the three VCs who own it think Asia Netcom is worth more than $1.2 billion. Which means they're on course to make a killing on their investment.

Nice work if you can get it. µ

L'INQ Asia Netcom