Mainland telephone operators have almost restored communications
disrupted by an earthquake off the southern coast of Taiwan last
month that severed undersea cables.
China Telecom, the country's largest fixed-line carrier, said in
a statement issued at 4 P.M. yesterday that it had "basically"
restored all its international call and Internet services over the
weekend after repairing the main cable.
The FNAL cable carries most of China's telecommunications with
North America and Internet connections with the rest of the world,
said Guan Li, spokeswoman for China Telecom.
But Guan refused to say how much loss was caused by the cable
breakdown.
In a similar statement issued hours later, China Netcom, the
nation's second-largest telecom operator, said it had "basically
restored" its international telecommunication service, especially
with North America.
It shares the FNAL cable with China Telecom.
Both statements said that several other cables which carry a
small portion of the traffic would be fully repaired in the next
two weeks.
A December 26 earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale cut
several undersea cables near Taiwan, slowing the mainland's access
to overseas websites to a crawl and affecting international
calls.
The government and telephone operators then initiated emergency
plans.
Most of the international Internet traffic was re-routed via
landline cables connecting China and Europe, and satellite
transmission was also used, a China Telecom spokeswoman said
earlier.
The telecom regulator in Hong Kong, which was hit harder as it
relies more on submarine cables, yesterday said most of the seven
submarine cables damaged by the temblor have now been fixed, adding
that one will take longer than estimated because of bad
weather.
The Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) said
repair work would be completed at the end of February, instead of
mid-February as had been anticipated earlier.
"Bad weather, technical problems and other reasons are causing
the delay," said OFTA Director-General Au Man-ho.
However, he said Internet providers had diverted Web traffic and
that the delay was not having a significant impact on Internet
services in Hong Kong.
"According to our reports from the providers, all services are
largely back to normal. It's approaching 100 percent," he said.
Au said a new warning system would be set up next month to alert
the public if a similar Internet breakdown occurs again.
The earthquake snapped several international telecom cables,
sparking widespread communication disruptions in the Chinese
mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and
elsewhere.
In April 2004, it took China Netcom 15 days to restore service
after a fishing boat from Zhejiang Province damaged an undersea
cable. The company suffered a loss of 6 million yuan (US$760,000)
in that incident, and indirect losses were estimated at 10 times
the amount.
(China Daily January 30, 2007)