JPHiP Forum
General => General Discussion => Topic started by: faraithi on December 27, 2006, 05:08:36 PM
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Taiwan quake disrupts phone, Web service - Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061227/ap_on_re_as/asia_quake
Taiwan quake disrupts phone, Web service
By STEPHAN GRAUWELS, Associated Press Writer
TAIPEI, Taiwan - Telephone lines and Internet service went dead across much of Asia on Wednesday after two powerful earthquakes damaged undersea cables used by several countries to route calls and online traffic.
Repairing the cables could take weeks because crews have to pull them up and transfer them to a ship for repair, said Lin Jen-hung, vice general manager of Chunghwa Telecom Co., Taiwan's largest phone company.
The quakes jolted Taiwan late Tuesday, setting off a tsunami alert on the second anniversary of the Dec. 26, 2004, waves and quake that killed 230,000 in nine countries from the Indonesian islands to east Africa.
No large waves materialized this time but two people were killed when their home collapsed.
Two cables were damaged, both off Taiwan's coast, Chunghwa said.
The company reported a 50 percent loss of overall telephone capacity, with connections to China, Japan and Southeast Asia most affected.
Chunghwa also said almost all of Taiwan's communications capacity with Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong was disrupted. Also hard hit was telephone service to the U.S., where 60 percent of capacity was lost, the company said.
Internet access in Beijing was cut or extremely slow, while Japanese customers were having trouble calling India and the Middle East. In South Korea (http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?p=South+Korea), dozens of companies and institutions were affected, including the country's Foreign Ministry.
Hong Kong telephone company PCCW Ltd., which also provides Internet service, said the quake cut its data capacity in half. Many Internet users were unable to access Web sites in parts of America, Taiwan and South Korea. Calls to Taiwan weren't connecting.
Internet access was cut or 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 no further details.
Businesses in various parts of the city also said they were experiencing Internet access problems.
CCTV, the state-run television network, said China Telecom Corp., China's biggest phone company, was contacting counterparts in the U.S. and Europe about using satellites to make up for the shortfall.
KDDI Corp., Japan's major carrier for international calls, said its fixed-line telephone service was affected by the quake. Company spokesman Haruhiko Maeda said customers were having trouble calling India and the Middle East, which are usually use the cables near Taiwan.
Maeda said the company was rerouting calls to go through the U.S. and Europe and the company did 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, was affected. Ministry official Akira Yamanaka said that some customers were unable to make calls using their cell phones in countries including Taiwan.
South Korea's largest telecom company, KT, said that lines it uses were damaged, affecting dozens of companies and institutions, including South Korea's Foreign Ministry.
However, the quake didn't cause problems for ordinary people using Internet and telephone service, according to Ku Ja-hong, a KT spokesman.
The quake, which hit offshore from the southern town of Hengchun, was felt throughout Taiwan. It shook buildings and knocked objects off the shelves in the capital, Taipei, in the northern part of the island.
The U.S. Geological Survey (http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?p=U.S.+Geological+Survey) estimated its magnitude at 7.1, while Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau measured it at 6.7. It was followed eight minutes later by 7.0 magnitude aftershock, the USGS said. A 5.9-magnitude aftershock struck early Wednesday, the Central Weather Bureau said.
Two members of one family were killed 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.
Quakes frequently shake Taiwan, which is part of the Pacific's "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin. Most are minor and cause little or no damage. However, a 7.6-magnitude earthquake in central Taiwan in September 1999 killed more than 2,300 people.
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My internet was being really screwy this afternoon, actually :o Thankfully, it only lasted for about an hour or so and works fine now.
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That bites. :\
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I got a friend who was really strugglnig to use msn to talk to me(from malaysia) he can only access malaysian sites now :(
I hope everyone involved in the earthquake itself is ok and are able to get the help they need.
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Fuckin' yeah.
Been crazy, I hear internet's down across the board over here, with only local site access being in any way reliable. For myself, half of all sites don't work. It sucks.
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I don't think Taiwan itself was hit by the quake. At least I have not seen/heard of news of people and places being affected by it. What I understand from the news is that the quake occurred off Taiwan hence the undersea cables got hit...
It would be really horrid if people had lost homes/loved ones, gotten injured by the quake, etc but the news agencies were only preoccupied with how the digital super-highway in Asia got screwed due to the quake. >_<
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CNN is reporting 2 dead.
Per the internet connections: seems they forgot the base rule of internet: build in redundency. Although if 6 of the 7 cables into HK are down... what should have been done is have (more) cables via other routes maybe?
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Cables are expensive. They have a fair bit of redundancy, but in the end every system is going to be vulnerable to acts of god.
Hopefully they'll manage to fix this before too long.
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So that's way my internet is sho shitty...
Oh wait... It has always been the crappiest internet on Earth!
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Does the quake affect the radio too?
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That might explain why my usually crappy internet connection was cracktastically crappier than usual today. Well, that and the mountain of snow that started dumping from lunchtime... O.o
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the 2 who died were both parents trying to protect their kids (from different families)
my mom has been watching taiwan news for a whole day since she found out (we're taiwanese)
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DAMN. What a sacrifice :( I been watching the chinese channel news too cuz I can't get no coverage.
WOW...this was scary. When I heard Tsunami Alert off the coast of Phillipines I got a sinking feeling. The main thing is that everyone stayed safe, but aiyah, the damage in Taiwan...