Asian Internet connection interrupted because of earthquakes in Taiwan

The earthquake with an initial intensity of between 6.7 and 7.2 richter yesterday cut off some lines of Hong Kong fiber optic cable - China - Taiwan. This force majeure incident significantly affects all service providers in Asia, including FPT, VDC, Viettel in Vietnam.

Internet service providers (ISPs) in Vietnam lose up to 60-70% of traffic. Currently, the technical department of these companies is still trying to solve the problem.

Representative of VDC said they are conducting 3 remedial directions. First start the backup network and contact the cable repair partner to quickly restore the line. VDC's technical staff is also channeling to prioritize important customers. " This is an incident of force majeure and we will find ways to accept high costs to quickly recover the problem, " an ISP representative said.

Currently, some websites in Vietnam are still operating normally, but access to some voice and content services, mainly to the US, are interrupted or interrupted.

The red circle in the picture is the area where the fiber optic cables are broken. (Photo: FPT Telecom)

According to Pham Cong Liem, deputy director of Network Operations Center, FPT Telecom Joint Stock Company (FPT Telecom), this incident is beyond the control of Internet providers. The specific effects that end users can see is that the connection speed will be slow, difficult to connect or unable to connect."FPT also has contingency plans but in fact it cannot fix 100%," said Liem. "Our partner from Hong Kong cannot confirm the time to fix this problem."

According to preliminary records of some cable network operators, this is a serious incident because most Internet traffic from South Asia to North Asia and the US, especially from Hong Kong and Taiwan to the US, will be jam.

The Taiwan - China and Hong Kong - China routes have been broken, causing complete paralysis of the network from South Asia to North Asia. The connection from Hong Kong to South Asia is still active but will soon be strongly affected as the throughput from the remaining channels is cornered.

The Hong Kong route to Taiwan, South Korea and Japan is almost " dead ", but traffic from Hong Kong to South Asia and Australia is not affected. Connections from Europe, the Middle East and South Asia to North Asia have been completely cut off.

In 2003, the earthquake in Taiwan also broke three cable lines from China to some other countries, causing information to stall for nearly a month. In May 2004, the international submarine cable route connecting Western Europe - Middle East to Pacific, referred to as SE-ME-WE 3 was also broken in Hong Kong, causing the connection from Vietnam to be affected. serious.

PK - HH