Here is the latest update on the network situation in Asia.
Networks Disrupted By Taiwan Earthquake Struggle To Recover
Asian firms look to European carriers for help as more shaking in the region Wednesday complicates repair efforts.
By W. David Gardner
InformationWeek
Jan 17, 2007 04:00 PM
An undersea earthquake struck off the coast of Taiwan on Wednesday, complicating efforts to repair six submerged cables that were severed by a stronger quake nearly four weeks ago.
The most recent temblor measured 5.0 on the Richter scale. Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau reported no immediate damage or casualties. This after a magnitude-6.7 earthquake killed two people and crippled the region's network traffic on December 26.
The events are likely to have a long-term impact as telecommunications firms gradually come to grips with the damage, one observer said.
"We're heading towards the fourth week after the earthquake and not a single cable has been repaired," said Todd Underwood of Internet and communications traffic monitoring firm Renesys in an interview Wednesday. "It's a tough situation -- deep water, rough seas, and not many boats available."
Underwood, who is Renesys' VP of operations and professional services, said the rerouting of traffic remains "very volatile," even as Asian firms have been imaginative in finding alternative ways to move their communications traffic. For example, he noted that Singapore's SingTel telecommunications company contracted with Telecom Italia to carry traffic.
Observing that many Asian telecommunications were turning to European companies for help in moving traffic, Underwood said that solution will be temporary.
"There's a longer term story to this," he added. "This could turn into an industry liability in the second half of the year." He explained that some Asian countries in general and China in particular are finding that robust communications connections are a necessity as they modernize their economies.
According to media reports, Microsoft's MSN and Windows Live services were hard hit by the network disruptions. The company has reported that its 15 million customers may continue to experience some disruptions, even though service has improved measurably.
A small flotilla of repair ships is reported to be steaming to the quake epicenter in the Luzon Strait between the Philippines and Taiwan.
Because voice capacity requires relatively meager transmission capability, voice communications are said to be approaching normalcy in the affected region.
Several telecommunications firms -- including AT&T and Verizon Communications -- had announced plans to build new networking facilities in the region before the earthquake hit. Underwood said the firms are likely to speed up their efforts to build infrastructure now that they see how needy the area is.
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Another earthquake off Taiwan has further hindered the repair work of the damaged undersea communication cables, extending the schedule by at least 15 days.
Workers found more damage to the thin cable lines after an earthquake measuring 5.2 on the Richter scale shook the sea around the island at 11:13am on Wednesday, Shanghai Securities News said today.
An official with Hong Kong's Office of Telecommunications estimated that the first phase of repairs would be finished by end of this month.
"The remainder should be completed by mid-February, depending on the weather," the official said.
Transport of the new cables will take at least four to five days as the cables have to be transferred through a third port before they reach Taiwan, which also prolongs the schedule, according to a communication operator on the island.
China Telecom and China Netcom, two major communication operators on the mainland, didn't comment on the progress of the repair work, said the report.
An official with China Telecom told the newspaper yesterday that the company failed to fulfill its promise of the cables being mended by Wednesday.
However, "the mainland's international fixed-line telecommunication services have been re-established and 70 percent of Internet services have been restored through alternate routes," said an official with the Shanghai Telecom.
MSN China is negotiating with the mainland's communication operators concerning the increase of its Internet access, to better improve its Windows Live services.
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QUOTE: Then in February, there will be another small off-shore quake that disrupts it another 15 days, then 2 more in March, another in April, etc. etc. etc.
Censorship by stealth?!
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I find it kind of odd that I can still check my email from my IP in the US (Mediacom - Central Illinois) fairly quickly. The only day I was unable to connect to the website was the day of the first quake.
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I have three mail accounts.
One is on my company mail server hosted on a private ISP in Sweden.
This one does work from time to time but very, very slow. If attachments it will time out.
The other is on yahoo.co.uk.
Some days it don't work at all, others it is fairly good.
The third one is an account with a large Swedish telecom operator.
This works fine. No problem at all.
My conclusion is that the telecom operators first look after their own traffic. What's left is then used by other ISP's depending on how important customer they are for the network operators and how important the traffic to China is.
All my mails are send from a mail server on my local computer.
It works perfect. That is, I get rid of all my send mail very fast.
The same seems to go for the web servers.
So it is important, who is the ISP.
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Albert
