An earthquake off the southern tip of Taiwan damaged several undersea cable networks, disrupting telecom and Internet traffic across Asia.
Cables damaged by the earthquake and its aftershocks included:
- the SMW3 cable, S1.8 (Fangshan - BU4) and S1.7 (BU3 - BU4)
- the China-US cable, including segment W1 (Shantou - ChongMing) & segment S1 (Shantou - Okinawa/SLO), and segment W2 (spur to Fangshan).
- the APCN cable, system 1 segment B17 (Hong Kong branch)
- the APCN2 cable, system 2 Segment B5 (Taiwan Branch), segment 7 (Tanshui - Shantou) & segment 3 (Hong Kong - ChongMing)
- the FLAG FEA cable, including sub-system 8 (Hong Kong - Shanghai - Korea)
- the RNAL cable, including the Hong Kong - Busan cable, and the Hong Kong - Toucheng segment.
On January 2, Hong Kong's Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) said major ISPs had recovered about 80% of their international connection capacity. Some real-time applications such as IP telephony may continue to be adversely affected by excessive response times. Major repairs are now expected to be completed in late January or February.
http://www.cht.com.twhttp://www.smw3.com/
