Fergie's Tech Blog

Quake Knocks Asia Back to Pre-Internet Days

An AP newswire article, via CNN, reports that:

With one blow, Mother Nature triggered the largest telecommunications outage in years, cutting off or slowing telephone and Internet traffic in Asia from Beijing to Bangkok.

A powerful earthquake off the southern tip of Taiwan late Tuesday damaged up to a dozen fiber-optic cables that cross the ocean floor south of Taiwan. They usually carry traffic between China, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, the U.S. and the island itself.

The magnitude-6.7 tremor, which struck near the town of Hengchun, killed two residents of Taiwan and injured more than 40 people.

It also showed the vulnerability of the global telecommunications network.

Chunghwa Telecom Co., Taiwan's largest phone company, said the quake damaged several of the undersea fiber lines, and repairs could take two to three weeks.

Taiwan lost almost all of its telephone capacity to Japan and mainland China. Service to the United States also was hard hit, with 60 percent of capacity lost.

posted by Fergie @ 12/27/2006 07:16:00 PM