An earthquake off the southwestern coast of Taiwan in December 2006 cut numerous undersea telecommunications cables. Hardest hit were NTT Communications and many other carriers serving the Asian region. We restored 90% of our services within two days of the disaster. This achievement reflected the effectiveness of our crisis management system and our global alliance. Another key factor was solid companywide understanding of our disaster response measures in keeping with our CSR consciousness.
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Maintaining a Disaster Management Structure that Makes Networks More Reliable, Secures Vital Communications, and Swiftly Restores Services
Crisis management has become central to tackling disasters in recent years, including as a government policy issue for safeguarding life and property. Many companies have adopted business continuity plans to deal with catastrophes.
NTT Communications is no exception. We devised such plans and other backup solutions for our customers. At the same time, we created several in-house crisis management organs, a good example being the Network Business Division’s Disaster Response Office. Our basic disaster policy is to make our networks more reliable, secure vital communications, and swiftly restore services.Management structure elements that allow us to swiftly tackle disasters include multiple relay transmission routes, redundant communications facilities, network controls, and other capabilities to secure vital communications.
We are a designated public corporation under the Japanese government’s Disaster Countermeasures Basic Act. We accordingly joined hands with 13 other NTT Group companies to formulate a plan to manage operations during disasters, and are ready to collaborate with national and regional government bodies.
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Instituting Emergency Response Structure to Restore Damage to International Telecommu-nications Services after Taiwanese Quake
A magnitude 7.1 earthquake off the southwestern coast of Taiwan on the evening of December 26, 2006, tested our disaster preparedness. The quake cut many undersea cables and severely disrupted Southeast Asian telecommunications services.
Most of our dama-ged cables served So-utheast Asia. Our corporate database, Internet connection, and international voice services went down or were congested for the first time since our estab-lishment.
It is important in situations like this to swiftly reinstate communications while quickly informing people internally and externally about the damage and restoration plans. Satoru Taira, section chief in the Customer Service Department of the Global Services Section, says that, “Our emergency structure went into action right after the Taiwan quake to resolve cross-divisional issues and share information companywide and with customers and other external stakeholders. Our global network engineers and foreign carriers were able to restore 90% of customer services within just two days.”
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Close Ties with Chinese and Other Asian Carriers Pivotal to Swift Services Recovery
Images of regular undersea cable laying operations
Our solid global network contributed greatly to the fast recovery of customer services. We drew on close ties with a Chinese carrier to establish a high-capacity land route from Shanghai to Hong Kong that bypasses Taiwan, where we concluded that it would take a long time to repair undersea cable damage.
We also leveraged strong relationships with fellow members of the Arcstar Carrier Forum to accelerate our services recovery. This body aims to help members improve service quality throughout the region. Junichi Oka, vice president of the Global Network Department in the Global Business Division, says that, “Close ties between engineers were crucial to our swift services recovery. And welimited disruption to IP-VPN and other managed network services for corporate customers by quickly redirecting traffic to alternative routes.”
Another factor in returning services to normal was our existing network infrastructure of massive cable capacity and multiple routes.
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Involving All Employees in Drive to Build a Quake-Resistant Global Network
Many Japanese companies have set up production units throughout Asia. Tatsuhiko Endo, general manager of the Disaster Prevention Planning Office in the Network Business Division, says that, “The Taiwanese quake admittedly hampered the operations of Japanese multinational customers, but they praised us for restoring services so swiftly. The event affirmed the quality of our companywide crisis management and response structure and the robustness of our global communications network. We’ll build on the commitment of all our people to disaster readiness.”
NTT Communications is strengthening its global network against disasters. For example, we plan to link Japan and Russia by laying the fiber-optic Hokkaido-Sakhalin Cable System with TransTeleCom, Russia’s top backbone telecom operator. That cable will serve multinational customers and supplement our Indian Ocean cable while providing backup in the event of quakes and other disasters. We will keep working to beef up our telecommunications technologies and deliver highly reliable services.
Service Restoration Rates as of December 28
Source: December 29, 2006, edition of the Asahi Shimbun
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Satoru Taira
Section chief
Customer Service Department
Global Services Section
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Junichi Oka
Vice president
Global Network Department
Global Business Division
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Tatsuhiko Endo
General manager
Disaster Prevention Planning Office
Network Business Division
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