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The following is an update by the Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) on the restoration of external telecommunications services today (January 4) subsequent to the damages to submarine cables caused by the earthquakes near Taiwan on December 26:
Latest Status:
Internet access to overseas web sites during the peak period approaching the mid-night last night (January 3) was generally slower than normal, same as the situation over the past few days, likewise this morning (January 4).
Over the past week there has been continued improvement in the access to the Internet. Telecommunications operators have made arrangements to obtain as much capacity for data traffic as possible to the North America via Europe, Singapore, Australia and China, The major Internet service providers (ISPs) have recovered about 80% of their international connection capacity. IDD and roaming services have almost resumed normal.
Repairing Status:
According to the latest schedule, one damaged submarine cable system will first be brought back to normal operation by the middle of this month. This should significantly improve the situation. The repair of the other damaged systems is expected to be completed progressively by the end of January or the beginning of February 2007, if the environment and the weather permit.
Advice to the Public:
As the situation has become stabilised over the past two days, beginning tomorrow OFTA will only publish its daily report if there is expected to be a major change to the current status.
While the situation is stabilised, during the period when damaged submarine communications cables are being restored, to avoid network congestion, the public are advised to minimise non-essential visits to overseas web sites, uploading or downloading large files to/from these web sites, and other non-essential activities which demand large bandwidth over international connections, such as playing on-line games, video conferencing, other real-time multimedia services and P2P file sharing.
Ends/Thursday, January 4, 2007
Issued at HKT 15:25
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