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By James Pomfret
HONG KONG - Asian Internet services stood up well on the first full working day of 2007 after earthquakes disrupted Asian Web access last week, but in Hong Kong officials said it could be mid-January before services are fully restored.
Much of Asia returned to work on Tuesday after holidays had reduced the strain on a communications system that had been damaged by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake off Taiwan on Dec. 26.
"We have restored all the services by re-routing," said a spokesman for KT Corp, South Korea's largest fixed line and broadband provider.
Southeast Asia's biggest telecoms firm, Singapore Telecommunications, said in a statement that Internet services were back to normal.
In Hong Kong, services were operating at about 70 to 80 percent of usual capacity, a telecommunications official said, with six of seven submarine fibre-optic cable systems linking Hong Kong to the global Internet still awaiting repairs.
"If one of the six cable systems being damaged can be brought back to service by the middle of this month, then we expect Internet services can resume normal," said Y.K. Ha, Hong Kong's acting Director-General of Telecommunications, told reporters.
Ha said the complex repairs would take longer than first anticipated, partly because a limited number of repair ships were being sought after by other places also affected by the quake, such as Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and China.
Ha said there was little economic fallout in Hong Kong, as most big firms had taken contingency measures.
"It's not as bad as we thought ... We don't expect the large corporations to experience any difficulties," said Ha.
But small and medium-sized businesses reliant on the public Internet, as well as home users, "may experience some delays or some congestion," he added.
In India, there were no major glitches reported, though industry officials called for better protection of undersea Internet cable routes in future.
"We have to ensure the stability of the fibre network and take steps for quick restoration in case of any damages," said R.S. Perhar, secretary of the Internet Service Providers' Association of India.
Source: Reuters
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