KARACHI, July 2: Sonic testing of the defective portion of the undersea SEA-ME-WE-3 cable began as the repair ship sent by the consortium that runs the world’s longest fibre-optic link arrived here on Saturday afternoon.

The president of the Pakistan Telecommunications Company, Junaid Khan, told Dawn that sonic testing was a cumbersome process and it would be some time before the fault was traced and repaired.

Internet connections and other telecommunications links of the country snapped late June 27 when the 39,000-kilometre-long fibre-optic cable developed a fault 50 kilometres off the coast of Karachi. The 92-party consortium of SEA-ME-WE-III, with operational headquarters in Singapore, appointed a UAE-based company, E-Marine, to rectify the fault.

“The fibre-optic cable is lying at the bottom of the sea. Sonic testing will enable the engineers working on the ship to localize the fault. Their work is hampered by the sea, which is very rough these days. Once they have traced the fault, they will pull up the cable from the seabed. They will repair the defective portion of the cable or replace it completely according to the magnitude of the defect,” he explained.

Mr Khan made it clear that the PTCL did not intend to sue for damages. “There is no such provision in the maintenance contract. The undersea cable could become defective due to a number of factors, including earthquakes,” he said.

He said that recent naval exercises were not responsible for the defect in the fibre-optic link. “I checked with the navy myself. First, their exercises took place away from the area in which the defective portion of the cable lies. Secondly, they did not use live ammunition,” he said.

Pakistan made an initial investment of $35 million in SEA-ME-WE-III in 1999. It pays around $2.5 million as maintenance cost, including repair cost, to the consortium on an annual basis.

The PTCL president recalled that the phone utility had invested Rs2.5 billion in another fibre-optic link SEA-ME-WE-4 two years ago. He added that the fibre-optic cable would become operational in November.

Mr Khan said another overland telecommunications cable connection between Pakistan and India would also become operational soon. He conceded that India had three telecommunications links with the outside world, adding that India’s great land mass gave it more options.