Indian ship detained for causing Sri Lanka's internet crash

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 August 2004, 13:03 GMT]
Sri Lanka Ports Authority Tuesday detained MV State of Nagaland, an Indian ship, for causing damage to the submarine fibre optic cable landing point off Mount Lavinia, a coastal suburb in southern Colombo. On a plaint filed by Sri Lanka Telecom, the Colombo High Court Monday directed Ports Authority to detain MV State of Nagaland. Sri Lanka Telecom said the damage to the landing point has been estimated to be five million US Dollars. The damage would take a week to repair fully, SLT officials said.

The landing point was hit by the Indian ship Saturday night.

Sri Lanka's connectivity to the internet and world wide web crashed completely when the point was hit and seriously damaged.

Internet services were restored partially from Tuesday afternoon.

Sri Lanka Telecom's (SLT) connectivity to the outside world is through Mount Lavania landing point of undersea SEA- ME-WE-III (SMW-III, South East Asia- Middle East – Western Europe) fibre optic cable link managed by French and Singapore telecom.

The SMW-III network supports 40Gbps bandwidth with two fiber pairs using SDH (Synchronous Digital Hierarchy) covering 41 landing points in 35 countries.