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The following is a statement issued by the Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) today (January 15) on the latest status of the restoration of external telecommunications services and the follow-up work done by OFTA with regard to the incident of damages to submarine cables caused by the earthquakes near Taiwan on December 26, 2006:
Latest status of service recovery:
Since the latest update released on January 4, there has been continued improvement in the restoration of external telecommunications services. IDD and roaming services have already resumed normal. The major Internet service providers (ISPs) have recovered about 80% of their international connection capacity. In general, users can smoothly access local Internet websites. For Internet access to overseas websites, there has been continued improvement, although the access during the peak period approaching midnight is still generally slower than normal.
Repairing status:
The telecommunications operators have continued to be engaging in the urgent repairs of the seven damaged submarine cable systems. Due to inclement weather conditions and the extensive nature of the damages caused by the earthquakes, the latest status is that the first stage of the repairing work of the damaged submarine cable systems is expected to be completed within the second half of this month. The previous estimation was that this was to be completed by the middle of January. The remaining repairing work is expected to be completed progressively by the middle of February if the weather and the environment permit.
The way forward:
In the light of the incident, two working groups have been convened by OFTA with an aim to conduct an urgent review of the existing outage reporting mechanisms. One of the working groups is for submarine cable operators, while the other is for Internet service providers. It is expected that the new outage reporting mechanism will be implemented in February.
OFTA will also initiate discussions with individual operators to gain a better understanding of their contingency measures. The operators will be urged to take serious steps to map out contingency plans to ensure sufficient backup and effective diversity to deal with emergencies. OFTA may consider issuing guidelines or codes of practice if necessary.
OFTA will consider what should appropriately be undertaken at the government level or inter-government level to facilitate the acquisition by operators of adequate backup capacity and route diversity under their contingency plans.
Ends/Monday, January 15, 2007
Issued at HKT 17:45
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