{"id":551178,"date":"2006-12-28T09:46:21","date_gmt":"2006-12-28T09:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/551178-scramble-to-fix-telecom-lines.html"},"modified":"2006-12-28T09:46:21","modified_gmt":"2006-12-28T09:46:21","slug":"scramble-to-fix-telecom-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/551178-scramble-to-fix-telecom-lines.html","title":{"rendered":"Scramble to fix telecom lines"},"content":{"rendered":"

At least eight boats headed to the waters between Hong Kong and Taiwan so that repairmen could tackle the complicated task of fixing underwater fibre-optic cables damaged in a huge earthquake off Taiwan on Tuesday. <\/font><\/p>\n

Although stock markets across the region functioned normally, access to overseas websites remained spotty, as did the ability to dial telephone numbers in the United States and across Southeast Asia. <\/font><\/p>\n

"Our system is gradually recovering," leading Japanese long-distance provider NTT Communications, said in a statement, explaining that it had re-routed much of its data transmission away from the troubled Taiwan route. <\/font><\/p>\n

"However, for certain customers it will take a longer time for full restoration as it may require a complete reinstallation of cables." <\/font><\/p>\n

Telecommunications operators in Taiwan and Hong Kong warned that although service would be gradually restored thanks to such re-routing of networks, fixing the widespread problems could take as long as three weeks. <\/font><\/p>\n

Five maintenance ships sent to repair cables <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

Taiwan’s largest phone company, Chunghwa Telecom, has contracted three boats from Britain, Japan and Singapore to take workers to the zone, said deputy general managed Lin Ren-hung. <\/font><\/p>\n

Efforts would be made to divert Internet connections with the support of foreign service providers until the ruptured cables could be repaired, he added. <\/font><\/p>\n

Hong Kong’s telecommunications authority said five maintenance ships had been sent out to repair the cables, which handle about 90% of total capacity in the area. <\/font><\/p>\n

International landline calling and roaming mobile services in the southern Chinese territory were returning to normal, but it said repairs could take up to a week. <\/font><\/p>\n

The 7.1-magnitude earthquake that hit Taiwan late on Tuesday sparked widespread disruption on Wednesday, hitting China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and elsewhere, but knock-on problems occurred as far away as Australia. <\/font><\/p>\n

Alternative providers?<\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

Millions of people dependent on the Internet for instant news updates, stock prices and e-mail were given a clear reminder of what life was like before the World Wide Web. <\/font><\/p>\n

Global banking giant HSBC said on Thursday its internet service has been affected and was working to restore service to customers via alternative providers. <\/font><\/p>\n

In Vietnam providers urged Internet users to ease congestion along the damaged lines by refraining from downloading music or large data files from local websites that were unaffected by the quake-related damage. <\/font><\/p>\n

Pham Cong Lien, deputy director of the Internet management center for FPT Telecom, Vietnam’s leading telecoms firm, said: "The problem is beyond the control of Internet service providers." <\/font><\/p>\n

In Thailand, traders and businessmen were able to access certain websites, but around 70% of the country’s Internet users were without access, according to CAT Telecom Public Company Ltd. <\/font><\/p>\n

South Korea’s information and communications ministry said 98 exclusive business lines – 80 run by Korean Telecom (KT) and 18 by LG Dacom – remained out of action but other Internet and telephone services were normal. <\/font><\/p>\n

"Just the services have got back to normal. The cables still remain damaged," Hong Seong-Yong, a ministry official handling the problem, said. <\/font><\/p>\n

Service across most of Australia had been restored on Thursday.<\/font> <\/p>\n

Discuss this article<\/a> <\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Millions of people across Asia suffered a second straight day without full Internet service on Thursday as telecoms operators raced to counter predictions of weeks without web access.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-551178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}