August 13, 2009

Internet Speed Down After East Asia Typhoon

Bangladesh has been experiencing slow internet speeds after Typhoon Morakot damaged undersea cables in East Asia this week, a senior telecoms official said on Thursday. Taiwan, Hong Kong, Philippines and Singapore are facing most trouble because of the damage to the Asia Pacific Cable Network-2 (APCN-2), BTCL managing director Khabiruzzaman told.

"Repair work has begun, we have been informed by Singtel of Singapore, and the net speeds will be back to normal by Friday," he said.

Reuters had earlier reported that up to 90 percent of all voice call and Internet services from parts of East Asia were disrupted after Typhoon Morakot damaged the undersea cables. A senior official of Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan's largest telecoms company also said services would be back to normal by Friday.

Chunghwa Telecom, a former state-owned monopoly,
shares APCN-2 with other operators in East Asia.

TF Leng, president of Chunghwa's International Business Group, said they were working with other affected telecommunications companies in the region to use alternative routes to restore connectivity. "We see that most Internet and voice connections should be back to near-normal levels by the end of Thursday," he said.

"The typhoon didn't destroy the cables all in one go, which would have led to a sudden outage of services. It slowly destroyed some of the cables, which is why it took a few days before users were affected."

The last time Internet users in Asia experienced an Internet outage as a result of a natural disaster was in 2006, when an earthquake off the coast of Taiwan damaged the undersea cables.

2 comments:

nivetha said...

Thanks for the information about the internet speed.I check my internet speed from the site www.ip-details.com.But from Yours I got the lot of information about the internet speed.Thank U.

Hamidur said...

Thanks, such comments are always welcome and appreciated.

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