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The following is an update by the Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) on the restoration of external telecommunications services as at noon today (December 31) subsequent to the damages to submarine cables caused by the earthquakes near Taiwan on December 26, 2006:
Latest Service Status:
a. Services for IDD and roaming calls from Hong Kong, including those using calling cards, to all countries and areas have almost resumed normal.
b. Services for IDD and roaming calls from overseas to Hong Kong have almost resumed normal.
c. Calls from overseas (except Japan and Taiwan) to Hong Kong using calling cards are still very congested.
d. On data services, overall there has been some improvement in access to the Internet. But most users will continue to experience slow access.
e. Local telecommunications services and communications with the Mainland and Macau are normal.
Repairing Status:
Two repair ships have arrived at the scene. However, one of the two ships had experienced a major fault yesterday (December 30) afternoon and is now under urgent repair in Gaoxiong, Taiwan. The repair for the ship is estimated to take about a week. Therefore the repair for the cables has to be postponed. It is estimated that the first part of the repair of a submarine cable system would be completed around January 16, 2007. For the other damaged cables, survey and assessment are being arranged and repair of most of the cables is expected to be completed progressively by the end of January 2007.
Advice to the Public:
Overseas callers calling Hong Kong are advised to use mobile phones or fixed-line phones instead of calling cards. But for callers from Taiwan and Japan, calling card services for calls to Hong Kong are normal.
Users of mobile phones should expect that there will be a longer delay for SMS' to and from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the United States and Canada in the approach to the New Year, when more users send and receive New Year greeting messages.
Internet users should, for the time being, minimise non-essential downloading of large files from overseas web sites and other non-essential activities that demand large bandwidth over international connections.
Ends/Sunday, December 31, 2006
Issued at HKT 13:46
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