Asia’s Communications System Begins to Return to Normal

An earthquake off Taiwan demonstrates Asia’s communications vulnerability



As the New Year dawns, Asia’s telecommunications and cable companies appear finally to be making progress in returning the region’s communications structure to normal in the wake of the December 26 earthquake that damaged undersea cables on the sea floor thousands of meters below the surface a few kilometers south of Taiwan.

A spokesman for China Netcom told the Xinhua news agency that five cable repair ships had been dispatched to the area and that two had begun work on the damaged cables, which are nearly 3,400 meters underneath sea. Nonetheless, on December 30, China Netcom’s business had only returned to about a fifth of the normal levels, and China Telecoms, China’s largest telecom operator, said that while its call services had been basically restored, the international Internet circuit had only recovered by about 15 percent and international exit band width was about 60 percent of normal levels, while Internet access to North America is still badly hampered.

Continuing seismic activity in the area is also hampering repair operations.The Boxing Day upheaval on the ocean floor, exactly two years after an earthquake-caused tsunami took the lives of an estimated 230,000 people in Southeast Asia, laid bare the extent and vulnerability of the global communications infrastructure, particularly the relative shallowness of Asia’s communications backbone. The 20mm fiber-optic cables that handle billions of data transmissions across the Pacific Ocean and throughout the region are relatively closely grouped south of Taiwan.

Although Hong Kong’s Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) reported that Internet traffic is returning to normal for the hard-hit territory, a spokesman said it could take until the end of January before the repairs are finally completed. In the meantime, cable traffic is being rerouted onto satellites and other cables.

Asia's undersea cables are concentrated south of Taiwan

The depth of the cables meant that submersibles were unable to get down to them. Surface ships must search for them with grappling hooks on a muddy and disrupted seabed, and then pull them up for repair. Because undersea cables carry proportionately more traffic and handle multiple regions – in this case much of Asia – they are far more vulnerable than those based on land, which use multiple pathways.

Taiwan lost almost all of its ability to communicate by telephone to Japan although that has since improved as alternative routes developed. Some 90 percent of capacity to Southeast Asia was wiped out. PCCW, Hong Kong’s primary Internet service provider, said data capacity had been cut in half.