Pacific undersea cable operators seem to have benefitted from changes they made in response to the 2006 earthquake-caused outages to multiple cable routes across the Pacific Ocean.

 

In the wake of multiple cuts to multiple cables near Taiwan starting August 12, 2009, traffic was rerouted to other cables on other routes, and though there has been disruption of traffic in Southeast Asia, complete outages have been avoided.

 

In part, traffic was rerouted west to Europe and then to the United States, while some traffic appears to have been rerouted to functioning Pacific cables. It also appears carriers have developed new processes and agreements with other carriers to swiftly move traffic when such incidents occur.

 

While the traffic has been rerouted, the repair work on the actual cables will likely take weeks due to the large number of affected systems. Some think it will take six to seven weeks to repair all the breaks.

 

Underwater landslides caused by Typhoon Morakat are the likely cause of the breaks.