Multiple earthquakes off the coast of southern Taiwan severed six out of seven subsea cables passing under the sea in the Luzon Strait, cutting nearly all communications access between South Asia with North Asia and the US. When the initial shock was over, the Internet in much of Asia came to a standstill as traffic bounced back from the severed links on its way to the critical trans-Pacific route. Web sites timed out. Popular online services were suddenly unavailable. Emails bounced. The Internet collapsed. Luckily, not all communications systems were down for the count. Despite multiple cuts on its EAC system, Asia Netcom, backed by its multiring network topology, full route and systems diversity, a highly experienced and motivated operations team, and dedication to customer satisfaction, shifted into high gear and restored services to not only its customers, but with enough capacity to spare to help bring the rest of Asia back online. In total, Asia Netcom’s engineers, field operation teams, service delivery and support professionals restored more than 100Gbps of intra-Asia capacity, equivalent to more than 20,000 residential broadband lines. Within hours of registering impacts to its network, Asia Netcom managed to restore all services to its customers, and was actively provisioning any remaining bandwidth to the region’s carriers and ISPs to reconnect the region to the global infrastructure. It was no easy task. It took the right technology, the right preparation, the right attitude and perhaps a little luck, to restore what could very well be the equivalent of one-fifth of the entire used capacity in Asia previously in just a little over a day. Through the entire period, the company’s customer support professionals proactively informed customers of the latest network status and restoration progress. In the center of the restoration process was Wilfred Kwan, Asia Netcom’s Chief Technology Officer, who gives a run-down of how the company helped its customers get back online and back in business in the 24 hours after the quakes off Taiwan.
By Wilfred Kwan 22