Emergency Measures to Back up Hong Kong after Internet Chaos

Posted 02 January 2007 @ 11:49 am EET     Print     Reprint     E-Mail     Comments

HONG KONG (AP) - Hong Kong telecom authorities assumed emergency powers on Tuesday as businesses faced disruptions to Internet links on the first day back to work after an earthquake damaged digital communications networks in the region.

Telecom providers and Internet service providers were giving the city's telecom authority OFTA hourly updates on service capacity as repair ships struggled to mend fibre optic cables severed in the Boxing Day quake off Taiwan.

"We put the emergency response system in place this morning as this was the first day that businesses and schools resumed operations after the Christmas and New Year holidays," said Ha Yung-kuen, acting director general of telecommunications at OFTA.

By mid-morning OFTA had received only 20 inquiries from Internet users, suggesting that services had not been hit as hard as had been feared. "The situation is better than we expected," Ha said, adding that Internet service providers had rerouted much of their traffic through land links with China and via satellite links.

A week after the Boxing Day quake snapped submarine fibre optic cables in the Taiwan Straits that carry most of the region's digital data, Ha said international phone calls, mobile services and fax lines were back to normal.

But with all but one of the seven submarine cables that carry international data in and out of Hong Kong snapped, Internet capacity was down to 70 percent.

"Service operators have said they will give priority to companies during business hours, so that means personal users will experience some delays," Ha said, adding that smaller companies that relied on bought-in Internet services rather than their own networks would suffer most.

He urged surfers to avoid accessing large overseas-based web pages to conserve capacity.

The 7.1-magnitude earthquake sparked widespread communications disruption in Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and elsewhere. Knock-on problems occurred as far away as Australia.

One repair ship was already in the damage zone working on Hong Kong's cables, while another was in port receiving repairs for damage sustained in rough seas. Another four were on their way, Ha added.

"If we can get just one of the six broken cables back in service, Hong Kong's Internet capacity can be brought back to normal levels by the middle of this month," he said. The rest would be repaired by the end of the month he added