If you’re experiencing slow internet speeds, don’t pick up the phone and call TMNET just yet. It’s not their fault! (for once…)
Cable faults due to Ricther 7.1 earthquake in Taiwan is the cause of the crawling internet speeds. Major cable problems at APCN2 S7 (Asia Pacific Cable Network 2, Segment S7) between Shantou-Tanshui at 00:07hr today, has resulted in congested international links to Malaysia, Japan, Korea and Hong Kong.
APCN2 is the longest international seabed fibre cable network, 19,000km in total length, in the Asia-Pacific, linking China, Japan, Malaysia, Republic of Korea, Singapore, and onward to linking America, Europe and Australia. The network went into operation in October 2002 for the initial phase.
The project was spearheaded by 26 telecommunications companies, namely Advantel, Cable & Wireless Global Network, Cable&Wireless HKT, China Telecom, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom, Concert, Global Network Services, Global One, Japan Telecom, KDD Corpe ration, Korea Telecom, KPN, Layer 2, MCI, WorldCom, Metromedia Giber Network Service, NTT Com, NCIC, OneLink Cable Network, PLDT, StarHub, SingTel, Taiwan Fixed Network, Teleglobe, Telekom Malaysia, Telstra and Williams Communications.
Affected overseas sites includes Google, blog sites like WordPress and Blogger as well instant messaging services like MSN and Yahoo! Messenger. I am experiencing major slowdowns with my US-based web and mail host Itsamac.com as well. Fortunately, I have a local-based web/mail host (with Emerge) as an alternate communication channel. Google is useable, but painfully slow at the moment.
It may take up to 3 weeks before everything gets back to normal, so till then, there may not be any updates to this blog.
My heart goes out to the Taiwan quake victims, who have their lives to worry about, much more that internet speeds alone.
