Asian Web Services May Take Weeks to Return to Normal (Update1)
By Tim Culpan and Andrea Tan
Dec. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Chunghwa Telecom Co. and Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. may need weeks to resume full Internet and phone services in Asia after earthquakes off Taiwan damaged undersea cables.
Chunghwa, Taiwan's biggest operator, restored partial services to the U.S., Canada and China by rerouting connections. Full access may take two to three weeks, said Leng Tai-feng, Chunghwa's vice president. KDDI Corp., Japan's second-biggest carrier, said repairs typically take ``several weeks to months.''
Companies from HSBC Holdings Plc to DHL Worldwide Express suffered the loss of online and phone services yesterday after a 7.1 magnitude quake and aftershocks struck southern Taiwan. Operators are using back-up systems to help alleviate the bottleneck as parts of Hong Kong, China, Singapore and India remain without Internet and phone access.
``Our first priority is to divert traffic. We're not aware of the severity of the damage to the cables,'' said StarHub Ltd. spokesman Eric Loh in Singapore. ``Our engineers have been working round the clock and are doing their best to rectify the matter as soon as possible.''
The damaged cables include the APCN2 and Sea-Me-We3 lines, Chunghwa said in a statement. Eight STM-1 cables from Okinawa off Japan and four STM-1 cables to Shanghai are acting as backup, Chunghwa said. The company may also use the ST-1 satellite.
Using Typewriters
HSBC said there was no access for its online banking service in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China, while Taipei-based Chunghwa said almost no calls could be made to Southeast Asia.
``All of our connections including those for logistics are out,'' said Apheron Cheng, an information technology manager for DHL's freight forwarding unit in Taipei. ``We will do everything manually including using typewriters.''
Singapore Telecom, France Telecom SA and Pakistan Telecommunication Co. are in a group that own the Sea-Me-We3 cables linking Europe to Asia. Operators in the APCN2 cable network that connects Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore include China Unicom Ltd., StarHub, Telekom Malaysia Bhd. and Telstra Corp.
``We're working very closely with our submarine consortium members to restore services as soon as possible,'' Singapore Telecom spokesman Chia Boon Chong said by telephone.
Shifting Traffic
Verizon Communications Inc. said in a statement today that some of its business customers may encounter service disruptions. The New York-based company is working with operators of affected undersea cables to determine restoration options, it said.
Part of Asia Netcom Corp.'s 19,500-kilometer-long EAC fiber- optic cable was also damaged.
``There are multiple cables passing the vicinity of Taiwan that carry Asian Internet traffic to the U.S. via Japan,'' Wilfred Kwan, chief technology officer of Asia Netcom, said in a statement. ``A large portion of this traffic has been forced to take the southern path via Australia or westward via Europe, to arrive in the U.S.''
Asia had the slowest Web connection with response time at 619 milliseconds, or triple the average 200 milliseconds, according to the latest figures from Internet Traffic Report's site, which monitors the flow of global Internet data.
Corporate Customers
``Data is more difficult to restore because it is high speed,'' Chunghwa's Leng said. ``We will restore services to some of our enterprise customers'' first, she said. Chunghwa will outsource the repair of the damaged cables to Asia Netcom.
The main quake, classified as ``major,'' struck at 8:26 p.m. local time on Dec. 26, 10 kilometers (6 miles) under the seabed, the U.S. Geological Survey said on its Web site.
The tremors came on the second anniversary of the 2004 Asian tsunami, when a magnitude 9.1 earthquake off Sumatra unleashed waves that destroyed coastal villages from Indonesia to Sri Lanka, killing more than 220,000 people.
``I can't trade if I don't know the prices,'' said David Leong, who heads the Singapore trading desk at First State Investments, which manages $15 billion in equities in Asia and emerging markets. ``I've put in limit orders to try to minimize the damage, but even then you need to have the basic information.''
To contact the reporters on this story: Tim Culpan in Taipei at
[email protected] ; Andrea Tan in Singapore at
[email protected]
Last Updated: December 27, 2006 11:49 EST