Asia quakes damage cables; Internet, banks affected

Posted by Budi Putra on December 27th, 2006 filed in Asia, Asia: Hong Kong, Asia: Indonesia, Asia: Japan, Asia: Korea, Asia: Singapore, Breaking News, News

The strong quake off Taiwan’s coast on December 26 damaged submarine cables and severely disrupted telecom links in the East, Southeast and South Asia.

“Due to the earthquake that hit Taiwan last night, several undersea data cables were damaged,” said a spokesman for PCCW, Hong Kong’s biggest fixed-line operator.

“Data traffic to Taiwan, Korea, Japan and the United States is affected,” he said, adding that the company was diverting the data and monitoring the restoration of the cables.

The spokesman said data capacity has been reduced to 50 percent, and that there had been an upsurge in attempts to accessing the web in the region as people were trying to get information about the quake.

He cautioned that some Internet users in the region could experience congestion over the next several days.

Singapore’s internet providers, StarHub and SingTel, were among those affected, as the incident has resulted in slow internet access. Link


7 Responses to “Asia quakes damage cables; Internet, banks affected”

  1. Obyektif Says:
    December 27th, 2006 at 7:28 am

    “Data traffic to Taiwan, Korea, Japan and the United States ARE affected,”

  2. Minda Indra » Akses Internet di Singapura Lambat karena Gempa Bumi Taiwan Says:
    December 28th, 2006 at 2:12 am

    […] Asia quakes damage cables; Internet, banks affected […]

  3. Indonesia Tech » Blog Archive » Due to disruption, Indonesia will use satellite for Internet Says:
    December 29th, 2006 at 1:43 am

    […] The government of Indonesia are considering to use satellite connection to reroute Internet access due to Asian internet access disrupted recently. However, the repair work is expected to take between two weeks and one month. The country’s telecommunications authorities, as well as major players in the industry, expect it to take between two and four weeks for Internet capacity to recover after it dropped to 17 percent Tuesday following the Taiwan earthquake. […]

  4. Global Voices Online » Blog Archive » Indonesia: Internet Outage and Flood in Aceh Says:
    December 29th, 2006 at 5:58 am

    […] The cause as reported by Budi Putra, , Sani Asy’ari and Enda Nasution is “the strong quake off Taiwan’s coast on December 26 damaged submarine cables and severely disrupted telecom links in the East, Southeast and South Asia.” […]

  5. The Asia Tech » Asia’s internet access recovers Says:
    December 29th, 2006 at 8:04 pm

    […] Asia - The future is here! « Asia quakes damage cables; Internet, banks affected […]

  6. 全球之声-全球博客内容中文翻译版 » Blog Archive » 印尼: 灾难接连袭来 Says:
    January 1st, 2007 at 3:09 am

    […] 根据Budi Putra、Sani Asy’ari与Enda Nasution的报导，断线主因是“台湾沿海于12月26日发生强震，损及海底电缆，也严重影响东亚、东南亚与南亚地区的电讯网络”。 […]

  7. Indonesia Tech » Blog Archive » Indonesia’s Net access almost recovers Says:
    January 4th, 2007 at 6:14 pm

    […] Almost two week after the 7.1 Richter Scale earthquake in the Taiwan peninsula that has disrupted internet access across Asia, Internet access in Indonesia has almost recovered to normal. […]

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