Asia’s internet access recovers

Internet access in Asia finally recovered recently. Maybe it still takes times to recover totally, but the recent progress is a good news for the region.

Asia’s Internet and telecommunication infrastructure showed signs of recovery on Thursday, following service disruptions caused by a series of powerful earthquakes off Taiwan’s southern coast earlier this week. A pair of powerful earthquakes rattled southern Taiwan within eight minutes of each other on Tuesday evening, local time, causing damage to undersea telecommunication cables.

“[The situation] is improving by the hour,” said Eric Loh, a spokesman for Starhub Internet Pte. Ltd., which offers cable and wireless Internet services in Singapore.

Repairing the cables will cost about NT$50 million (US$1.5 million), Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom Co. Ltd. said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The operator, which lost much of its international capacity following the quake, lost NT$100 million in revenue due to the quake, the filing said.

Repairing the damaged cables will take two to three weeks, Chunghwa Telecom said. Link