A Teleglobe Communications International transatlantic cable carrying traffic between the US and Britain was severed on Monday, taking down the UK’s largest computer network, The Joint Academic Network (Janet). The network, which is considered one of the UK’s most important and reliable, was down from early morning till around 3pm. The Canadian telecommunications company said traffic was not automatically re-routed because the Cantat 3 cable that was cut was not a ring cable and thus healing had to be manually initiated. Teleglobe said it believed the cable had been cut due to a trawler accident but could not be sure until a cable ship reached the cut – somewhere between Iceland and the Faeroe Islands – on Monday. A spokesperson for Teleglobe said, We will know the cause and how long it will take to fix once the ship is on site. In the meantime, all the traffic is being routed through three other Teleglobe cables and the communications company says services should be normal. It is not yet clear what other networks besides Janet were affected.
