Battling severe weather conditions, technical experts have successfully repaired the undersea cable network in the West Asia region that provides connectivity to Reliance Globalcom, an arm of Reliance Communications.

E-marine, the principal provider of submarine cable installation and repair solutions in West Asia, has successfully completed the repair in the Arabian Sea, says a report.

Despite adverse weather, they restored service of the FLAG Europe-Asia (FEA) network on behalf of Reliance Globalcom Ltd, it said.

However, during the entire repair Reliance Globalcom network services on the cable remained operational on alternate routes.

The FLAG-FEA cable network provides a vital telecommunications link to the markets of Western Europe and Japan through West Asia, India, South-East Asia and China.

But local services got impacted recently after a suspected ‘repeater’ failure on the branch to Fujairah, in the United Arab Emirates.

Cable owners, Reliance Globalcom Ltd, engaged E-marine to replace the repeater, which required attending to a malfunctioning branching unit in the Arabian Sea.

E-marine immediately deployed its largest cable ship, Niwa, which set sail from Sharjah, the UAE, with a skilled crew and technical staff on board to fix the fault.

The E-marine crew battled through severe weather during the monsoon season, with winds almost always above 35 knots, and sea swells above 20 to 35 feet, well above the normal range of 8 to 12 feet.

Despite the difficult conditions, the crew completed the operation with less than 20 hours downtime, reducing any impact to local services, it said.

The repair was carried out in waters approximately 4,000 metres deep and during the recovery the damaged cable parted at the joint between the main high tension cable and the branching unit.

Further investigation by E-marine and the on-board Reliance Globalcom representative revealed previous damage to the joint that was very likely the cause of the original cable fault.

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