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China Networks Disrupted By Taiwan Earthquake Struggle To Recover |
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Wednesday January 17
 While most of Qingdao, China DSL users are still struggling just to check their email (hotmail & Yahoo), another undersea earthquake struck off the coast of Taiwan, China on Wednesday January 17, 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. Telecom officials say that more earthquake damage to undersea cables have been discovered that could hamper full restoration of Asian Internet services to until next month. They are also anticipating that poor weather will add to the delays. Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom spokesman said engineers had uncovered new damage to cables catering to China that could delay repairs for another week.
 "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. However, it seems that Google services were the least affected by this Asian Internet Tsunami.
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.
Networks Disrupted By Taiwan Earthquake Struggle To Recover. 17 January 2007 <www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196901587>
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