[Starlink] Blog on Tonga cable

[Starlink] Blog on Tonga cable

[Ulrich Speidel]

Shameless self-promotion: For those interested - this is kind of a 
wrap-up of my seminar last week:

https://blog.apnic.net/2022/03/01/when-volcanoes-go-bang-submarine-cables-do-what/

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Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)

The University of Auckland
u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
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Re: [Starlink] Blog on Tonga cable

[Michael Richardson]

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Looking at the diagram in the blog entry, I see how Australia/NZ<->Hawaii
cable crosses the Tongatupu/Suava cable.
How does cable repair work when there is another cable "on top"?

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Re: [Starlink] Blog on Tonga cable

[Ulrich Speidel]

Usually, you would cut either side of the cable on top and then put the 
splice on top of that cable and leave the cut piece on the seafloor. 
Pulling out from underneath would likely cause damage to the cable on 
top. That said, damage close to crossover sites is very rare: For one, 
damage to cables in deep water is actually a rare event - many systems 
run for decades without a fault - and most cable systems have few if any 
crossover points.

In this case, the Hawaiki cable was actually laid after the Fiji-Tonga 
cable, so Hawaiki is on top, however the recent damage on the Fiji-Tonga 
cable was a significant distance to the east of Hawaiki, so it wasn't 
impacted. In fact, there are plans for a Hawaiki spur to Tonga's 
northern island group of Vava'u (and microwave links from there to 
Ha'apai and down to Tongatapu / 'Eua).

On 2/03/2022 6:12 am, Michael Richardson wrote:
> Looking at the diagram in the blog entry, I see how Australia/NZ<->Hawaii
> cable crosses the Tongatupu/Suava cable.
> How does cable repair work when there is another cable "on top"?

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****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)

The University of Auckland
u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
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