[photopress:cableship.jpg,full,alignright]Today, February 2, we came back on line. A lot of nonsense has been talked on the Internet how everything from the undersea earthquake was fixed within days of it happening on December 26. Nonsense.
Now the telecommunications regulator in Hong Kong has admitted the first of six cables damaged in an earthquake last week would not be restored until January 16, and that work on the remaining cables would not be completed until the end of the month.
This means that some internet users in China will continue to experience either slow access to the web or be unable to access sites.
The Office of the Telecommunications Authority in Hong Kong said the repair work has been hampered by bad weather and mechanical failure. One of two maintenance ships was forced to abandon the effort to repair damaged cables Saturday after suffering a ‘major fault’ and sailing to Taiwan.
In a statement the authority said, ‘The repair of the ship is expected to take about a week. Therefore the repair of the cables has to be postponed.’
The earthquake, which struck on Dec. 26 with a magnitude of 6..7, caused unprecedented disruption to regional communications. Six out of seven undersea telecommunications cables — carrying the vast majority of East Asia’s data and voice traffic — were severed or damaged.
Source: International Herald Tribune