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HK Tech Phooey

Tapping the pulse of this gateway for Asia's IT

by Victor Cheung, Hong Kong SAR, PRC


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SLOW Internet speed across Asia

Aug 18, 2009 23:42

Following the hit of Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan last week, certain Asian countries have been experiencing very slow Internet speeds even as we go into the second week after the disaster. According to PC World, "six of the important fiber-optic cables were damaged by undersea landslides caused by Typhoon Morakot as it passed Taiwan. One was knocked out on August 9 as Morakot hit the east coast of the island and the others were damaged after the typhoon passed to the other side.

"The damaged cables disrupted Internet and telecommunications between Taiwan, China, Hong Kong and parts of Southeast Asia, including Singapore and the Philippines. However, Chunghwa Telecom of Taiwan [claimed] restored service quickly by using backup systems and rerouting traffic to other cables."

As of today, Twitterers are still tweeting/complaining about the slow agonizing speeds. A post on Digital Marketing Inner Circle stated that "according to various twits coming in, I am being told that the slow Internet connection may be due to cable break faults that occurred yesterday (August 17, 2009) morning between China and Taiwan because of the typhoon." People been experiencing slow connections or limited access to YouTube or Facebook.MSN and a number of foreign sites were reported to be timing out or increasingly slow to load.

Well, while foreign aid is pouring into Taiwan at this very moment, we pray that all goes well with the rescue missions and reconstruction works that follow. Last but not least, I hope the Internet lines will be back up to normal as soon as possible.

[Update] Just found out from Napolean Biggs over at Web Wednesday that apart from the Typhoon, an earthquake on Monday off Taiwan's coast was also contributing to the problem.More updates are covered in this post over at Telecom Asia.

According to Telecom Asia, "Mondays quake, which measured 6.5 on the Richter scale, has severely restricted access to foreign websites from Hong Kong and mainland China for much of the past two days.

"In a poll on the sina.com Web site late yesterday afternoon, 46.2 percent said they could not access any foreign Web sites and another 37 percent said the bandwidth speeds were 'very slow'. Popular apps and Web sites such as MSN and Yahoo were unavailable for much of the period, users complained.

"China's biggest fixed-line carrier, China Telecom, said it had experienced 'a series of breaks' in subsea capacity off Taiwan. By noon Tuesday, it had recovered to 60 percent of lost capacity. It was working with other international operators and expected to have 75 percent restored by today or Thursday."



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ExpatCanadian says...
I'm glad I found this post and thanks for posting it. I've been experiencing slow internet since 2 days ago, and I'm not the only one, the other teachers and the school I work at also have slow internet. I'm going to check with my ISP just to make sure.

I'm not entirely sure we can believe them when they say it's damaged cables, but since it isn't just happening to a few of us, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Aug 19, 2009 11:32
 
 
hkphooey says...
Well, found out from my readers that it's not only the typhoon but an earthquake off Taiwan on the 17 August 2009 as well. For more updates, check out this post from Telecom Asia, www.telecomasia.net....

"Monday’s quake, which measured 6.5 on the Richter scale, has severely restricted access to foreign websites from Hong Kong and mainland China for much of the past two days.

In a poll on the sina.com website late yesterday afternoon, 46.2% said they could not access any foreign websites and another 37.0% said the bandwidth speeds were “very slow”. Popular apps and websites like MSN and Yahoo were unavailable for much of the period, users complained.

China’s biggest fixed-line carrier, China Telecom said it had experienced “a series of breaks” in subsea capacity off Taiwan. By noon Tuesday it had recovered to 60% of lost capacity. It was working with other international operators and expected to have 75% restored by today or Thursday."

Aug 19, 2009 12:13
 
 
firebrand says...
Thank you for this! I have subscribed to your blog just because of this very informative entry. I live in Guangzhou, China and accessing websites outside of China has been almost impossible since Monday night. It's very frustrating and I hope something is done as soon as possible. Keep us updated!

Best wishes,
Alex

Aug 19, 2009 18:22
 
 
gbarnes says...
Much worse as of 11.20pm Thursday 20th Hong Kong time. No access to many sites mainly based in the US with slow performance to sites in Europe.

Aug 21, 2009 00:06
 
 
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About Victor Cheung

A true tech junkie at heart, Victor Cheung has been obsessed with all tech gadgets since his college days. His favorite gizmos span from tablet PCs to UMPC, to PMPs, gaming consoles, mobile phones and anything with WiFi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.0 on it. A newcomer to the blog scene, he started his own quasi-tech blog, The Hong Kong Phooey in October 2006.

 
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