By Heather Smith
Dec. 20 (Bloomberg) -- France Telecom SA, Europe’s third- largest telephone company, sent a maintenance ship to repair three severed undersea cables connecting Middle East, Europe and America under the Mediterranean Sea.
“The Raymond Croze ship left early this morning, between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m.,” France Telecom spokesman Louis-Michel Aymard said in a telephone interview today.
The cables, which run from Alexandria in northern Egypt to Sicily in southern Italy, carry more than 75 percent of traffic between the three regions. France Telecom is using secondary routes for data traffic from Europe to the Middle East and Asia, reducing the impact for customers, Aymard said.
The maintenance ship, carrying 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) of cable, is expected to arrive at the site of the damage on the morning of Dec. 22, and should be able to begin work immediately, Aymard said.
The SMW4 cable, also known as SEA-ME-WE 4, or South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4 cable network, connects 12 countries: Pakistan, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy and France.
That cable is expected to be operational by Dec. 25, France Telecom said in a statement on its Web site. A second cable, SEA-ME-WE3, should be repaired by Dec. 31, and service should return to normal by the New Year.
To contact the reporter on this story: Heather Smith in Paris at hsmith26@bloomberg.net.
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