As you all know, as I was spending my time cavorting in LA with nubile movie actresses and highly paid movie execs, there happened to be an earthquake in Taiwan.



What's happened since that time? Lots of painful Internet slowness, in a nutshell. Andrew Lih is keeping us informed on the impact that it has had on Southeast Asia, in general terms.

And one Hong Kong blogger has pinpointed some glaring errors in the Hong Kong telecommunications authority's handling of the incident. I detect lots of frustration here, and some of that is granted since the Internet service and some of the telephone service in this city are still pretty bad.

Tom has pointed out that OFTA, the Office of the Telecommunications Authority, keeps revising how long the repair crews will take to get Hong Kong and most of East Asia back up and running after the earthquake split some undersea cables. He details what he calls "slippage" right here.

The resulting damage from the earthquake has impacted the Internet more than anything else, making service for almost everything very, very slow.

Though I was beset with problems on my mobile during the earthquake, finding it difficult to call internationally or to send text messages from Taipei on the 31st of January, the Shanghaiese had no trouble, sending 224 million text messages on New Year's Eve. I couldn't send much of anything on New Year's. I was able to call someone in Hong Kong. And I was able to send text messages. But I got no responses, so I am assuming they are lost forever in sidereal space.

More stories about LA to come, including: The Americans don't text much, but they love to talk.

 

rion
Level: