Friday Review: Counting the cost

While the human stories of last Friday's earthquake and the resulting tsunami which devastated vast areas of northeast Japan naturally dominated the mainstream news this week, reports of the disaster's potential impact on the telecoms industry featured heavily on Total Telecom. Coverage initially focused on damage caused by the earthquake to undersea cables in the region, with a report on Monday alleging that around half of the cable systems running across the Pacific Ocean had been affected. Hong Kong operators Pacnet and PCCW; Japan's NTT Communications and KDDI; Taiwan-based Chunghwa; and Chinese fixed-line provider China Telecom were among the companies to report disruption to their services caused by the earthquake. Submarine network cables are vulnerable to seismic activity…