Quake-hit phone and internet links to be restored

Nearly all Asia’s earthquake-hit internet service and 80% of its phone service will be restored today, following one of the largest telecommunications outages in years.

Lin Jen-hung, vice-general manager of Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom also said that four ships with crews to repair the two undersea data transmission cables ruptured during Tuesday’s powerful earthquake in Taiwan would arrive in the affected area on January 2.

The 6.7-magnitude earthquake and aftershocks on Tuesday night and yesterday caused disruptions for major telecommunications operators from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, China, Singapore and South Korea – with ripple effects spreading beyond Asia.

Wu Chih-Ming, another Chunghwa official, said the company was adopting emergency measures to restore internet and telephone services on the island.

“We are renting transmission capacity from private cable operators,” he said, adding that a small portion of phone service was also being routed through satellite connections.

In Hong Kong, the government said today it would take at least five days to partially repair the damage to two undersea cables. It urged internet users not to log on to overseas websites unnecessarily. People were also told not to repeatedly make non-urgent telephone calls to overseas numbers if earlier attempts had failed.

A Hong Kong telecommunications official said all seven major cables serving the Chinese territory were affected, some severely.

“Of the seven major submarine optical fibre cable systems serving Hong Kong, all of them have been affected,” said Au Man-ho of the Telecommunications Authority. “Six of them have been completely damaged and there is a remaining one with a limited capacity.”

Au added that roaming and long-distance phone service to all destinations except Taiwan were normal again.