CNMI should brace for slow Internet speeds

A damaged submarine fiber optic cable and a backup system that also needed tweaking effectively cut off Saipan from the rest of the world early yesterday.

According to IT&E, the largest service provider on the island, the damaged cable that caused the massive outage was located between Saipan and Tinian.

IT&E executives were summoned yesterday afternoon on Capital Hill to give an update on the outage.

A woman helps Asian Airlines general manager Syungnum Park get a signal as he makes a satellite phone call off-island at the Francisco C. Ada-Saipan International Airport. (Dennis B. Chan)

Essentially, only the landlines were left operational. Calls going out of Saipan were also not possible, including calls to nearby Tinian and Rota, which also suffered the same effects.

According to Vhelma Palacios, IT&E’s head of engineering, a “break” was identified along IT&E’s undersea fiber cable located between Saipan and Tinian at 2am yesterday.

Palacios said IT&E immediately started repair work on the “break” which was closer to the Saipan shoreline.

High seas and rough undersea currents brought by Typhoon Chan-Hom were identified to have caused the damage.

Fred Hill, regulatory compliance officer at IT&E, said large waves along the area caused a boulder to flatten the fiber optic cable.

The cable is located on top of a reef and is not buried or embedded due to environmental laws.

Hill said as soon as the damage was identified, IT&E turned to its backup system, which is a microwave dish located on Rota.

But it turned out that the microwave system was itself “damaged” and needs to be “realigned.” According to Hill, the microwave system was damaged by Typhoon Dolphin.

Hill said repair activities have started for the microwave system, and it is expected that it would be online by today.

Palacios added that IT&E chartered a helicopter going to Rota to transport a repair team to look at the microwave dish.

It was made clear that the microwave backup will not have the same capacity as the submarine cable, which will result to slower Internet speeds for the CNMI.

Hill said basic services such as voice and SMS are expected to come back today, as well Internet access.

But Internet access will not be as fast as before, and that services requiring higher bandwidths—including Netflix and other streaming services—are expected to be drastically affected.

Palacios said IT&E cannot provide the exact speeds as it needs to “calculate the capacity” of the backup system and that services need to be prioritized for critical businesses, including banks.

She said IT&E will also provide updates on the capacity of the network.

Repair of the damaged fiber optic cable will take a longer time. IT&E reckons that it will take three months to repair the damaged fiber optic cable.

Rose Soledad, IT&E managing director, said the service provider will continue to provide customer updates on a regular basis over the radio and press releases.

Priorities

Acting governor Ralph DLG. Torres called for an emergency meeting yesterday to allow IT&E to give the updated information to the CNMI government.

Torres said one of his primary concerns was to clarify rumors that the outage will last for “weeks, even months.” He said he also wanted to find out from IT&E how the outage will affect critical services including banking, health, transport, and government operations.

“We invited IT&E to give us the updates and for us to know how to prepare for this,” Torres said.

Almost all of the CNMI departments were represented during the meeting, as well as the Office of the Attorney General. Torres said the CNMI government can also call on the military depending on the situation.

Torres said after hearing the updates, the immediate action now is to “inform the community that the system is down.”

“We got some assurance that mobile phone services and Internet access will be back,” Torres said, adding that IT&E promised to try its best to keep the phone lines up and running.

Torres said he “is satisfied to know” that it seems the services will be back “sooner than expected.”

Déjà vu

IT&E Sales and Marketing manager Hans Mickelson compared the current network outage to a 2008 incident during a briefing earlier at IT&E headquarters.

However, Mickelson said at that time “just a few strands” of cable were damaged.

He said from start to finish, the repair took two or three weeks.

The entire cable wasn’t down at that time, he said.

He called yesterday’s cable damage an “act of God.”

He said he has been with the company for 10 years and has seen other instances where weather has caused damage to not only undersea equipment but also microwave equipment and IT&E towers.

He said weather is a major factor, noting that after years and years of undersea currents “something’s got to give.”

Mickelson said the diagnostic equipment used by IT&E technicians to assess the cable damage was laser shot down to the cable to “see where the anomaly is.” (With reports from Dennis B. Chan)