Perth-Singapore subsea cable cut

The SEA-ME-WE 3 subsea cable running between Perth and Singapore has been severed, affecting a number of services in Australia and New Zealand.

Telecom New Zealand confirmed today that the issue is affecting outbound emails from xtra.co.nz email addresses.

The cable was reportedly cut five days ago. The full length of the cable is 39,000 kilometres, and it has 39 landing spots across the globe, connecting 33 countries and spanning four continents.

iiNet confirmed to ZDNet that its services have not been affected, but said that it has less options for international traffic during the outage.

It is not the biggest outage ever to hit the cable; a break in the cable in 2005 cut off internet and phone services in Pakistan, disconnecting a reported 10 million users.

ZDNet contacted the chairman of the consortium in charge of the SEA-ME-WE-3 subsea cable for comment; however, no response had been received at the time of writing.