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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 (January 1) subsequent to the damages to submarine cables caused by the earthquakes near Taiwan on December 26:
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 fully recovered.
b. Services for IDD and roaming calls from overseas to Hong Kong have almost fully recovered.
c. Calls from overseas (except Japan and Taiwan) to Hong Kong using calling cards are still congested.
d. For overseas fax, the status is similar to the IDD calls with some possible downgrade in quality.
e. On data services, overall there has been improvement in access to the Internet. But most users will continue to experience slow access.
f. Local telecommunications services and communications with the Mainland and Macau remain normal.
Repairing Status:
Two repair ships have arrived at the scene. However, one of the two ships experienced a major fault and is now under urgent repair in Gaoxiong, Taiwan. The repair for the ship is estimated to take about a week. Therefore the schedule for the repair of submarine cables is delayed. The repair of most of the cables is expected to be completed progressively by the end of January 2007, if the environment and the weather permit.
Advice to the Public:
As most businesses and schools will resume operation tomorrow (January 2), Internet users visiting overseas web sites may experience slow response or congestion. E-mails to and from overseas servers, especially those with large files such as images, will take a longer time than usual to reach destinations.
While telecommunications operators are now making arrangements to obtain as much capacity for data traffic as possible to the North America via Europe, Singapore, Australia and China, which will help to improve the data traffic including access to overseas web sites, 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.
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.
Ends/Monday, January 1, 2007
Issued at HKT 15:40
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