Widespread internet inavailability in East Asia

Posted by multippt

It looks like the earthquake (a massive 7.1 on the Richter scale) which occurred in Taiwan on the 26th of December, 2006, at 8.26pm seems to have triggered some disturbance in some underground cables. While the earthquake fortunately trigger a tsunami (Thank goodness, we wouldn’t want history to repeat itself again too soon. Its already bad enough that a massive tsunami took place on this day two years ago.), it did some how manage to disrupt the normal bandwidth that the people in East Asia get. During such a moment, the download speeds plummet such that it is a hassle to view a web page.

This situation happens to be the worst technology-related disaster in Asia. The scale of the damage is so large that it damaged six undersea cables, leaving only one to carry the internet flow. Internet accessibility to sites from countries such as the United States is poor, since the cables to the country is severely damaged. The damage also showed the region’s dependence on the telecommunication services for businesses. Fortunately, this incident occurred during the period where business is relatively less active (due to public holidays such as Christmas) compared to the other times of the year.
The undersea cables should be fixed in 2 weeks time (probably by 2007). During this time however, this site would be effected, since the administrators are in the affected area (Singapore, East Asia). So there may not be much content being posted here until the problem eases.