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In response to public and media enquiries about external telecommunications services after the earthquakes near Taiwan last night, the Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) confirmed today (December 27) that external telecommunications services in Hong Kong, including Internet access to overseas websites, IDD calls and roaming calls had been affected by the earthquakes.
"Due to a series of earthquakes south-southeast of Gaoxiong, Taiwan at around 1226 UTC on December 26, 2006, a number of submarine cables passing over the earthquake region were damaged. According to the reports submitted to OFTA by operators, telecommunications users have been facing severe congestion in a number of external services," an OFTA spokesman said.
Because of the extent of the damage, the congestion is expected to continue for a few days. The operators are now taking emergency measures to maximise the throughput of the existing facilities and using alternative routings to pass the traffic in other directions.
"Operators of the submarine cables have also arranged urgent repairs of the damaged cables. It is expected that some of the submarine cables will take at least five days to repair. OFTA has been liaising closely with all external telecommunications service operators and monitoring the progress," the spokesman added.
The spokesman also advised the general public to minimise non-essential Internet access to overseas websites and not to repeat making non-urgent overseas calls immediately after failure on the call attempts.
Ends/Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Issued at HKT 18:56
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