Hello,

As some of you probably already know, our (Fibre Lac) 144-fibers cable was completely cut yesterday on the motorway between Basel and Zürich, somewhere on the communal territory of KaiserAugst, in Canton Argau, near the border with Basel-Land.

On this part of the motorway, there are a lot of ducts burried, something like six 120mm ducts and twelve 34 mm. The people doing work there were installing new driver crash barriers, which is done by digging holes for the posts and then putting the posts in the holes. They go as far as 1m for the barrier to be correctly installed. The 34mm fiber ducts, used by Fibre Lac and two international operators, are burried below the six 120mm ducts, and the whole thing is filled with concrete. The workers still managed to have the posts go through two (empty) 120mm ducts and reached, 60cm under the ground, fiber optics cables, among which they broke several the tubes, but only one really filled with fibers, ours. The other operators were not cut.

Among impacted customers and partners, there were several operators and internet exchanges, and especially SwissIX and IXEurope (TIX link Geneva-Zurich). We then quickly started to look for a rescue solution at least for the active network (we couldn't really find a 144-fibers unsused cable on another path), and we managed to have a rescue link set up at about 22:40, thanks to several people : - Freddy Kuenzler, Init7, for lending the fiber pair, and spending hours trying to get the whole thing working, - Sascha Kaufmann, IXEurope, for spending hours trying to get the whole thing working, - Herr Bolliger, IWB, for spending hours trying to get the whole thing working, when it was public holidays in Basel.

Today, at 5am, a 200m temporary fiber cable was replacing the broken one, laid down in a temporary duct behind the fence along the motorway, this is obviously not secure, but at least bytes can flow again. We're working on the definitive solution, which means re-opening the motorway, changing the damaged duct parts, and blow a new cable.

If you want more information, I'll be happy to provide you with it, since I believe it's quite an ususual incident and I think it's better for everyone to know what happens and what is done !

I and Fibre Lac globally, we are really sorry for every one of you who got issues directly or indirectly due to this incident.

Thank you for your understanding !

Guillaume