Asia back online after quakes, but access patchy

SINGAPORE, Dec 28: Asia's telecommunications services were partly restored on Thursday after earthquakes off Taiwan cut undersea cables and knocked millions of users offline, but with few alternative routes, access was slow and patchy.

Telephone traffic was back to normal in some parts of Asia but many operators in North Asia struggled to get up to full speed a day after business and home users from Seoul to Sydney were hit by one of the worst tech disruptions in Asia.

Internet access in many countries had also improved by Thursday although many customers complained of slow connections.

Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan's top phone company, said it could take up to three weeks to repair six submarine cables owned by a consortium of telecoms firms.

Two powerful quakes off Taiwan on Tuesday, one of magnitude 7.1 according to the U.S. Geological Survey, severed the cables.

At least five maintenance ships based in the region are heading for the waters near southern Taiwan to repair the undersea cables, Hong Kong's telecoms regulator said.

''In general, it requires about five to seven days to repair the cables,'' the regulator said in a statement. ''However, due to the earthquake, the seabed may have been damaged and there may be further earthquakes that will affect the maintenance work.'' The main quake struck off Taiwan's southern coast at 1226 GMT on Tuesday, killing two people and leading to aftershocks that sparked chaos on Wednesday. Businesses across the region ground to a halt, although many said it was fortunate that the breakdown happened in the middle of the quiet holiday period.

''Voice services to the United States, Japan, Canada, China and Singapore have been restored as of 1 pm (0500 GMT),'' an official at Chunghwa said. However, services to Hong Kong remain seriously disrupted, with only 27.6 percent functioning, while those to Southeast Asia were about 50 percent.

TRAFFIC DIVERTED

Regional operators scrambled to divert traffic through other lines or via satellite. But the switch to alternative cables put additional pressure on Asia's networks, causing slow Internet access and problems dialling abroad.

KDDI Corp., Japan's second-largest telecoms firm, said that while its international phone services had switched to alternative routes, about 177 of its corporate network lines remained affected, compared with 290 lines on Wednesday.

NTT Communications, a unit of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp., said in a statement that 87 percent of its 243 corporate data transmission lines had recovered by mid-morning while some of its Internet services continued to be slow.

KT Corp., South Korea's top fixed-line and broadband operator, had restored most of the telephone services but broadband services for some clients, including banks and the country's foreign ministry, remained unavailable.

Local media reported that 36 foreign bank branches in South Korea had been affected.

Sofyan Djalil, Indonesia's information and communications minister, told a press conference the government would ease its restrictions on the use of foreign satellite links after serious disruption to the nation's Internet service.

''A lot of fiber-optic cables are still broken. This affects the entire area including Indonesia. The effects are mainly seen in the banking sector, by users of international ATMs and the internet,'' he said.

Hong Kong's dominant fixed-line and broadband provider PCCW Ltd. said it would take days to recover lost capacity but did not provide further details.

SHAKY, BUT BETTER

By Thursday afternoon, business across the tech-savvy region appeared to be suffering from fewer disruptions.

Regional stock markets continued their strong year-end run after a record close on Wall Street.

Several Fortune 500 firms in Singapore, Southeast Asia's financial centre, had been hit by the disruption on Wednesday, with Internet access completely down or slowing to a crawl.

''It's getting better because more traffic is being diverted to other cables right now,'' said a spokesman at StarHub, Singapore's second-largest telecoms firm.

Singapore Telecommunications, Southeast Asia's top phone company, also said services were progressively being restored, and that it was working closely with the submarine cable consortium members.

CAT Telecom, Thailand's Internet regulator and sole controller of the international gateway, said four of its eight optical networks had been affected, causing its speed to drop by 70 percent. The problem was expected to continue for seven to 10 days, a spokeswoman said.

Telekom Malaysia said international call services to countries including Taiwan, Japan, China, Hong Kong, South Korea and the United States had been affected but that it was working closely with other Asian telecoms firms on the repairs.

REUTERS