All Internet services in Sri Lanka were restored Thursday after damage earlier this week to a digital fiber optic submarine cable cut off most of the island country from the global Internet.The SEA-ME-WE 3 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe) cable of Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT), the largest telecom and Internet services provider in the country, was damaged early Sunday, allegedly by an Indian vessel that dropped anchor in a prohibited part off the Sri Lankan coast.Set up by a consortium of telecommunications service providers, SEA-ME-WE 3 connects Northern Europe to East Asia and Australia, spanning approximately 39,000 kilometers (24,233 miles). It was set up as a follow-on high-capacity cable to the earlier SEA-ME-WE 2 submarine cable system. SLT’s connectivity to the SEA-ME-WE 3 is through a landing point off Mount Lavinia on the coast of Sri Lanka.“The restoration of the cable is in progress, but services have been restored using our SEA-ME-WE 2 cable link and satellite connectivity,” said Kapila Sri Chandrasena, chief marketing officer of SLT in Colombo. Besides a SEA-ME-WE 2 link, which it set up in 1994, and the SEA-ME-WE 3 link set up in 1999, SLT has three digital satellite earth stations. “We are currently getting sufficient bandwidth for both our Internet and telephony services,” said Chandrasena, adding that with the SEA-ME-WE 3, SLT in fact has excess bandwidth.Soon after the cable was damaged, telephony was restored early Sunday morning using the SEA-ME-WE 2 link, while International Private Leased Circuits were restored soon after, according to Chandrasena. E-mail services were restored by Monday, while all other Internet services including broadband were working normally again by 1 a.m. local time Thursday. Internet, international dialing and data services of 800,000 subscribers were affected in Sri Lanka, according to SLT, although some private operators, who have their own international gateways to the Internet, were able to offer service.SLT has claimed $5 million in damages from the shipping company that owns the Indian vessel, M.V. State of Nagaland, and a district court in Colombo ordered the ship detained until a Sept. 6 hearing of the case. However, according to a report from Colombo of the Press Trust of India (PTI), a Delhi-based news agency, the ship was released Thursday by the Sri Lankan navy as there was no evidence linking the ship to the cable damage. Other reports have it that SLT had withdrawn its case. Chandrasena declined to comment on these reports.It is not clear yet when SLT will be able to restore the damaged cable. SLT sent a cable repair ship to the site of the damage on Tuesday to do physical repairs. “The testing and rectification of the fault became more complicated since the restoration operation has to be carried out without interrupting other (international Internet) traffic,” SLT said in a statement earlier this week.SLT is majority owned by the government of Sri Lanka, which holds 49.5% of the company’s equity. NTT Communications in Tokyo owns 35.2% of the equity, and the remaining 15.3% is publicly held.After the damage to the SEA-ME-WE 3 cable, SLT is beefing up its routing options in both fiber optical undersea cable and satellite media, which will both increase the available bandwidth, and provide more backup alternatives in case of similar mishaps, according to a statement Thursday from the company. SLT will now have direct connectivity to Singapore, Germany and India, apart from its direct routes to the U.S. and Japan, the statement said. Related content news TSMC bets on AI chips for revival of growth in semiconductor demand Executives at the chip manufacturer are still optimistic about the revenue potential of AI, as Nvidia and its partners say new GPUs have a lead time of up to 52 weeks. By Sam Reynolds Dec 08, 2023 3 mins CPUs and Processors CPUs and Processors Technology Industry news End of road for VMware’s end-user computing and security units: Broadcom Broadcom is refocusing VMWare on creating private and hybrid cloud environments for large enterprises and divesting its non-core assets. By Sam Reynolds Dec 08, 2023 3 mins Mergers and Acquisitions news analysis IBM cloud service aims to deliver secure, multicloud connectivity IBM Hybrid Cloud Mesh is a multicloud networking service that includes IT discovery, security, monitoring and traffic-engineering capabilities. By Michael Cooney Dec 07, 2023 3 mins Network Security Cloud Computing Networking news Gartner: Just 12% of IT infrastructure pros outpace CIO expectations Budget constraints, security concerns, and lack of talent can hamstring infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals. By Denise Dubie Dec 07, 2023 4 mins Network Security Data Center Industry Podcasts Videos Resources Events NEWSLETTERS Newsletter Promo Module Test Description for newsletter promo module. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe