New cable damage, bad weather delay full restoration of Asian Internet services |
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Wed, 17 Jan 2007 11:45
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TAIPEI (XFN-ASIA) - Newly discovered earthquake damage to undersea cables and bad weather could delay the complete restoration of Asian Internet services until next month, telecom officials said.A spokesman for Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom said engineers have found new damage to cables servicing China, putting back repairs by about a week.'As we are short of direct transportation between Taiwan and the mainland, it will take four or five days to transport the needed cables from the mainland via a third place,' a company official told Agence France-Presse.The official said he expects repair work on the cables, damaged by a powerful earthquake on December 26, to be finished by the end of January.'But I cannot say for sure because bad weather may hamper the continued work. It may add uncertainty to the work,' he said.Hong Kong officials also warned that poor weather could delay repairs well into next month.'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 Office of Telecommunications Authority said in a statement.It said the rest of the repairs would be completed by the middle of February, if weather permits.Meanwhile, the Chunghwa official said that eight repair boats have been sent to the waters between Hong Kong and Taiwan to tackle the complicated task of fixing the damaged fibre-optic cablesCurrently nearly 95 pct of Taiwan's telecommunications capacity has been restored although access to some foreign websites remains slightly slow, he said.Hong Kong's telecoms authority said major Internet service providers have recovered about 80 pct of their international connection capacity.In China, web access has remained sluggish compared to before the earthquake.afp
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