Internet kommer vara tr?gt i Thailand 3 veckor efter jordb?vningen

[Gulafebern SE]

Internet slowdown to be a pain for at least three weeks
Taiwan quake cripples Thai Internet

BANGKOK: -- Telecommunications across Asia have been severely disrupted because of damage to undersea cables caused by Tuesday's earthquake near Taiwan.

Banks and businesses in Taiwan, South Korea, China and Japan reported telephone and internet problems.

In Thailand, Internet access slowed to a crawl, with up to 90 per cent of e-mail and web access impossible. There was no word from CAT Telecom, the government monopoly which supplies all Internet service to Thailand.

Taiwan's largest telephone company, Chunghwa Telecom Co, said damage to an undersea cable had disrupted 98% of Taiwan's communications with Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong.

Repairs could take three weeks, Vice-General Manager Lin Jen-hung said, but quality would improve daily.

Telecommunications companies in Hong Kong, Japan and China also reported problems.

China's biggest telecoms provider, China Telecommunications Group, said that communications cables to the US and to Europe had been damaged.

"Internet connections have been seriously affected, and phone links and dedicated business lines have also been affected to some degree," it said.

Repairing the cables harmed by Tuesday's 6.7-magnitude quake could take three weeks but "quality will improve day by day," said Lin Jen-hung, vice general manager of Chunghwa Telecom Co., Taiwan's largest phone company.

The company said damage to a cable off Taiwan's southern coast has interrupted 98 percent of Taiwan's communications capacity with Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong.

The damaged lines knocked out Internet service for some Hong Kong customers, who were unable to access Web sites in parts of Asia and the U.S.

Hong Kong telephone company PCCW Ltd., which also provides Internet service, said several undersea data cables were damaged in the quake.

"Data traffic to Taiwan, Korea, Japan and the United States are affected," PCCW said in a statement.

The company also warned customers that they may experience congestion for several days on the Internet because of an upsurge in use as people surf the Web for more information about the quake.

Financial traders in Hong Kong _ one of Asia's biggest business capitals _ complained they lost their connection to Bloomberg LP, a key provider of news and data about stock markets. Bloomberg declined to immediately comment on the outage.

Internet access has been cut or has become extremely slow in Beijing, said an official from China Netcom, China's No. 2 phone company.

The official, who would not give his name, said the cause was thought to be the earthquake, but he had not further details.

Businesses in various parts of the city also said they were experiencing Internet access problems.

CCTV, the state-run television network, said the earthquake had damaged undersea communications cables from China to the United States and from Asia to Europe.

It said China Telecom Corp., China's biggest phone company, was contacting counterparts in the United States and Europe about using satellites to make up for the shortfall.

KDDI Corp., Japan's major carrier for international calls, said Thursday that its fixed-line telephone service has been intermittently affected following the quake.

KDDI spokesman Haruhiko Maeda said that the quake damaged several undersea communication cables in southern Taiwan shared among international communication companies.

He said that customers are having trouble making calls to India and the Middle East, which are usually routed through cables near Taiwan. Maeda said the company is rerouting calls to go through the U.S. and Europe and the company does not know how long it will take to repair the cables.

Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said that international roaming service provided by Japan's major three telecommunications _ NTT DoCoMO, KDDI, and Softbank, has been affected. Ministry official Akira Yamanaka said that some customers were unable to make calls using their mobile phones in countries including Taiwan.

The quake, which hit offshore from the town of Hengchun near Taiwan's southern tip, came on the second anniversary of the tsunami that killed more than 200,000 lives in southern Asia.

Tuesday's quake was felt throughout Taiwan. It shook buildings and knocked objects off the shelves in the capital, Taipei, in the northern part of the island. Two members of one family were killed Tuesday in Hengchun when their four-story home collapsed. The quake injured 42 people, three homes collapsed and 12 fires broke out, the National Fire Agency said.

Suck, ni som spelar n?tpoker ska nog skita i det ett tag fram ?ver?

[Gulafebern SE]

Internet recovery continues slowly
CAT capacity restored to 50%

Millions of frustrated Internet users across Asia have slowly regained access to overseas websites, three days after an earthquake off the coast of Taiwan snapped several vital undersea cables.

Connections remained slow in Malaysia and Thailand, where communications authority CAT Telecom said capacity had only been restored to 50 per cent.

"Thailand is still lucky compared to other countries where Internet connections have totally collapsed," a CAT official said.

Telecoms operators across the region re-routed Internet links to circumvent the ruptured lines off the southern part of the island, as engineers donned diving suits to assess the damage and begin repairs.

"Everything is improving now," said a spokesman for PCCW, Hong Kong's largest fixed-line operator.

"All international call and roaming services have gone back to normal, including to Taiwan, although some websites are still congested," he said.

Hong Kong's telecommunications authority said five maintenance ships had been dispatched to repair six fiber-optic cables, which handle about 90 per cent of telecommunications capacity in the area.

"Overall there has been some improvement in access to the Internet today. However, most users will continue to experience slow access," it said in a statement.

It added some ships arrived at the scene Thursday, but the weather had obstructed survey and assessment work.

"Initial surveys indicated that damage to the submarine cables was substantial," it said.

The authority said it may take longer to repair the cables than the original estimate of five to seven days.

Taiwan's largest phone company, Chunghwa Telecom, has commissioned three more ships to assist the repair effort. The cables ruptured following Tuesday's 7.1-magnitude earthquake, which killed two people on the island.

An official from Chunghwa said voice traffic to the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia remained relatively weak, but was improving.

Internet users frustrated by their inability to log onto e-mail accounts, news websites and online banking services -- conveniences that have become part of modern life -- found access across the region Friday improved, but still patchy.

Southeast Asia's largest telecom operator, Singapore Telecommunications, said it had established a "command centre" to restore full service as quickly as possible.

"Internet access to all websites has been normalised for emailing, browsing and online transactions," it said in a statement. "Access to services such as gaming and video downloading, which require higher bandwidth, may experience some delays."

The company said SingTel BlackBerry service had been fully restored.

"As part of our cable traffic redirection effort, traffic to the US is being re-routed via Europe or Australia, as well as using other channels such as satellite links and landlines," it said.

In South Korea, Hong Seong-Yong, an official at the communications ministry, said: "Recovery work is moving ahead quickly, with nearly all financial institutions, including foreign banks, back to normal overnight."

The Chinese state-run Xinhua news agency characterised the week's web difficulties as "cyber-chaos", with a source at China Netcom saying progress on restoring service had been slow.

China Netcom said two boats had been sent out to start repairing the damaged lines and three others would soon depart, the China Daily reported.

Indonesia's telecoms authority said it could take up to a month to restore Internet capacity, which had fallen to just 17 per cent following Tuesday's quake.

"This incident is a major problem for us," director general of post and telecommunications Basuki Yusuf Iskandar was quoted as saying by The Jakarta Post.

Analysts said it was too early to estimate the total financial losses caused by the week's Internet mayhem. Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom put preliminary losses at 150 million Taiwan dollars (4.6 million US).

"They are the hardest hit, I would say," noted Sachin Mittal with DBS Vickers Securities in Singapore. "Probably all the (other) telcos will be less than Chunghwa."

[Gulafebern SE]

Uppdatering:

TAIPEI: -- Five repair ships have arrived in Taiwanese waters to fix earthquake-damaged undersea cables that have slowed down Internet traffic in the region, but the repair work could last two to three weeks, the state-run Chunghwa Telecom Co said yesterday.

"The repair ships arrived in Taiwan waters on Wednesday and sailed to the site of the damaged cables today," Chunghwa Telecom said in a statement.

"They will check and fix the damaged cables, but the repair will take two to three weeks," the statement said.

The four undersea cables linking Taiwan to south-east Asia, the United States and Europe have a total of nine ruptures caused by the December 26 earthquake off Taiwan's south coast.

The quake and its aftershocks damaged four of the six undersea cables owned by Chunghwa Telecom, cutting or slowing down the region's voice, data and Internet connections with the outside world.

It also affected business and daily life in neighboring countries as Taiwan is a rerouting point for their undersea cables.

A cable connecting China to the U.S. has three ruptures, one connecting south-east Asia to the Middle East and Western Europe has two ruptures, and two cables forming part of the Asia-Pacific Cable Network have 2 ruptures each.