Apparently, India lost most of it's access to the Internet. I wonder how much all of those call centers handled business?

Story HERE

I read that in the paper today. It said that a lot of our tech support calls didn't get answered...

Good ridance.

Gee, must have caused a big decrease in telemarketing calls too. That would explain why all of a sudden I could understand the ones I got.

-Hal

I wonder if it was accidental or intentional

Yes! Take the fight to the phone and e-mail spammers!

I vote we depth charge the cables monthly.

I was gonna throw out a Microsoft India. * Global Technical Support Center joke along that line... but you got there first.

:thumb:


Some real zingers so far guys

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Here is another story on it, that was on slashdot today.
How one clumsy ship cut off the web for 75 million people

It also had a cool map of the undersea cables across the world.
click here, to see the map of undersea cables

The Med is a deep body of water and only craft specially equipped could even locate the cable. Most likely cause is a landslide. The press has put forth the idea of a ship dragging anchor. This would only be possible near shore and of course the master not having or being able to read his charts for no anchorage areas. Even then, the port/harbor master would direct all anchorages. As for dragging anchor, no master would intentionally hazard his vessel by having too little scope of chain.

Looks like you're right. NOW the press is claiming ships were not the cause.

click the link below for the story:
Ships did not cut internet cable

quote by The Press Association form the article linked above:

Looks like it was an act of God. Good to know he's looking out for us.

-Hal

Mysterious dragging anchors or landslides, doesn't matter. Isn't it funny how we ALL hate getting "customer service" from India, yet so many companies keep shoving it down our throats. You would think these guys would figure it out. Why make all your customers mad?

Whenever I call customer service, or they call me, I say, "Please transfer me to someone whose primary language is ENGLISH". IT WORKS! Possibly they know I'm a stubborn old .... that doesn't believe in being PC. Last company was MCI, who just couldn't get it through their head that they had P O'd us 10 years ago and we would never use them again. That after using them from early 80's til late 90's. Yes, they screwed us and would not correct the error. $12 has cost them $1000! Anyhow, when I demanded and got an address to send my bill to for the time I wasted messing with them, they quit slamming me bimonthly. I digress, Truly, demand a rep whose primary language is English and keep name, employee number, and time notes! It seems to scare them when you ask for an employee number! Maybe I've got too much time on my hands! John C. (Not Garand)

It's more cost effective to have angry customers, with cheap foreign labor... than happy customers, with domestic labor, contribution to the US economy and god forbid a union.

Regardless, it is funny how our focus went to customer support instead of the topic of the thread.

de-railed by public opinion.

Ok, just for Tony. When I was in the USAF, I spent a year at Thule, Greenland AFB. We had a submarine cable that terminated in Deer Lake Newfoundland. I worked in the Thule Cablehead. There are actually 2 cables, transmit and receive.
The only 2 things that got our cables were icebergs and fishing nets. Remember the ocean floor is not flat, the 'bergs' come up against a ridge and will 'ride' alongside the ridge until the water gets deeper or the ridge 'fades away'. If they happen to hit a ridge where a cable is, SQUISH. Fishing nets from trawlers get tangled up with the cable, hoisted up to the boat, and the cable gets chopped off with an axe or a saw! Considering that there was a total potential difference of 2800 volts DC from end to end, I'll bet that caused some serious blue flame arcs!
Construction of submarine cable is co-axial, with multiple layers of polyethylene, lead, carbon steel wire, and tarred burlap. DEEP water cable typically has a center conductor about 3/8" inch diameter, an inch or so of polyethylene, spirally wound copper tape for the outer conductor about 1/8th X 3/8ths of an inch in size. Then another layer of poly, a layer of tarred burlap, then a layer of lead sheathing. That's for VERY deep cable. As it gets into shallower water, multiple layers of spirally wound carbon steel wire, between 1/4 and 1 inch in diameter, depending on how big the cable is getting from multiple layers of protection.
We had a 2 foot section of shoreline cable that had been sectioned to show every layer. This thing was about 10 inches in diameter, and even though all the layers had been partially removed, the thing weighed about 90 pounds! John C. (Not Garand)

Updated story here.

And now they're fiber instead of copper! But I'll bet they have a copper pair running the length of the fiber cable to power the amps! John C. (Not Garand)