If you live in Hawaii you must have been shocked by a sudden shortfall of cable services in the city as of Tuesday last week. Even though it was soon corrected, about 400,000 Oceanic Time Warner Cable customers are estimated to have been affected by Tuesday’s cable disaster that saw Internet services, cable TV and phone services halt for some time before being temporarily fixed as reports emerged that there had been a break in the undersea fiber optic cable that passes through the Molokai Channel.

Temporarily Restored

It was a distressing two hours before the services could be restored, albeit preliminarily from the time the accident happened at about 1 a.m. Even so, the service could only be restored on Oahu and Kauai after the two hours, for the other cities like Maui and the Big Island, users had to wait up to Tuesday afternoon before the services were restored. The undersea deep cable rests about 3,000 feet below the ocean’s surface and as such, having it repaired is expected to take more than three weeks. According to Oceanic’s vice president, the cable laying ship will be arriving in Hawaii in three weeks time and until then; no meaningful repairs can be done. As it is currently, even the particular cause of the breakdown is not known yet and will not be till the ship arrives and the repair works are commenced.

Not all Telecoms Firms Affected Though

Oceanic and other companies lease the fiber optic cable but its original owner is TW Telecom Inc. Despite the long waiting period, Maui county officials had expected that their office phones using the prefix 270 would be back in operation by Wednesday latest. Maui County’s service provider is known as Wavecom Solutions and it as well confirmed the return to full working of the county phones with the named prefix by latest Wednesday morning. But as other firms and companies cry foul over the outages from the cable breakage, one company in Hawaii is not particularly complaining. Hawaii’s largest telephone firm, Hawaiian Telecom reported that it had not been affected by the undersea cable breakage.

Repairs to take Three weeks or more

Time Warner Cable is well known as one of the foremost cable television companies in America and it remains to be seen what the how fast the whole repair works will be expedited to prevent further losses to the company. Its cable TV networks were affected and may not be up till the repairs are thoroughly finished in the over three weeks that it may take. Even so, Hawaii residents in the affected counties will be waiting to see how the temporary measures taken to bring up crucial services such as internet services are fully reinstated given the fact that reports and even the cable company have confirmed that there won’t be any meaningful changes until the cable can be fully repaired.

It is now obvious repairs may not be happening until after the arrival of the cable laying ship in three weeks’ time.