Australia Japan Cable awaits repairs after April break

A break on the Australia Japan Cable (AJC) is still awaiting repair more than three months after it occurred. 

The cable system was damaged in April, but remains in operation while repairs are being scheduled. 

AJC chief executive David Crofts confirmed the break to iTnews, but said traffic was being rerouted across another segment of the system's protected architecture. 

"There is one cable break on AJC close to shore at Tanguisson in Guam that was traffic affecting," Crofts said. 

"Pending receipt of permits to proceed with the repair, that traffic has been internally restored via the other AJC Guam landing using the ring architecture of AJC’s fibre configuration." 

Crofts declined to elaborate on how the break happened and if AJC customers are experiencing performance degradation.  

Earlier, backbone provider Vocus' general manager of network engineering, Rick Carter, tweeted that the repairs are scheduled to commence in August this year. 

The 12,700 kilometre cable is jointly owned by Telstra, Japanese telcos NTT and Softbank Telecom, as well as Worldcom and Communications Global Network Services. 

Initially built in 2001 with a 25-year lifespan, the AJC has reached one terabit per second capacity after being upgraded to 100 Gbps wavelength technology delivered by Infinera in 2014.  

AJC said the cable can be upgraded further, to over 5 Tbps, in the future.