Taiwan quake knocks out internet links

Tuesday's earthquake in Taiwan triggered the largest telecommunications outage in years, cutting off or slowing telephone and Internet traffic in Asia from Beijing to Bangkok.
The powerful quake off the southern tip of Taiwan damaged up to a dozen fibre-optic cables that cross the ocean floor south of Taiwan.
They usually carry traffic between China, Japan, Korea, South East Asia, the US and the island itself.
The magnitude 6.7 tremor, which struck near the town of Hengchun, killed two residents of Taiwan and injured more than 40 people.
It also showed the vulnerability of the global telecommunications network.
Chunghwa Telecom Co, Taiwan's largest phone company, said the quake damaged several of the undersea fibre lines and repairs could take two to three weeks.
"In total we have four broken sea cables," said Lin Jen-hung, the Vice-General Manager.
"Yesterday we placed an order that starts from next week when there will be three cable ships arriving to the area near Pingtung. Cable ships from Japan, Singapore and the United Kingdom will start to repair simultaneously."
Taiwan lost almost all of its telephone capacity to Japan and mainland China. Service to the United States also was hard hit, with 60 per cent of capacity lost.
In Hong Kong, a government statement said it would take at least five days to partially repair the damage to two undersea cables.
A Hong Kong telecommunications official said all seven major cables serving the Chinese territory were affected, some severely.
The cables on the deep ocean floor are just two-thirds of an inch, a testament both to the immense data capacity of fibre optics and the fragility of the links that form the global telecommunications network.