ACE CABLE UPDATE

ACE is a two fiber pair 20 Tbps cable that links Paris and Lisbon to 16 West African countries. For nine countries it is their only cable and there is not much cross border fibre. Ivory Coast reported an outage started October 19th. Service was restored today. Vandals cut the back haul fibre. 

However, there appears to be a subsea problem as well. The Sophie Germain has left port and will fix a fault on the cable's segment 6. She will reach the probable repair site November 1st. It is probably a fault where water has reached the power conductor and increased electrical resistance, but not affected optical performance. Otherwise we would see more performance degradation reports. Note that power compensation in these cases is limited. Water will eventually disrupt power totally if not quickly repaired and cause a major outage. 




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