Sea-Me-We3 to remain offline through May

The Sea-Me-We3 internet cable connecting Perth and Singapore is likely to remain down for at least the rest of May after its operator uncovered two separate faults.

The subsea cable was cut on May 10, reducing routing options for internet providers directing traffic to and from South East Asia.

It is the third time the cable has been cut since August last year.

The cable operator has located two shunt faults on the Singapore end, one 28km from the city-state and the other 231km away.

The shunt fault located 231km away from Singapore will be the first repaired, with the cable ship Asean Explorer sent to perform the work.

It has a tentative repair date of May 30.

However, “there is no current schedule to repair the fault nearer to Singapore”, according to updated advisories by telcos impacted.

Shunt faults are typically used to describe damage to the cable’s insulation. This could be caused by ship anchors, trawlers, ocean currents and sometimes sea creatures.

Future outages of Sea-Me-We3 are not likely to be as problematic as competition is introduced to the route.

Two projects have cables coming online: Vocus’ Australia-Singapore Cable (ASC) will be the first to be brought online, followed by the heavily-backed Indigo cable, which is being fast-tracked.