Asia Slowly Recovers From Telecom Outage

Lin Jen-hung, vice-general manager of Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom Co. talks to reporters during a news conference at the company's headquarters, Thursday, Dec. 28, 2006, in Taipei, Taiwan. Lin said that 95 percent of Asia's earthquake disrupted Internet service and 80 percent of its phone service will be restored by noon (0400 GMT) Thursday. The 6.7 magnitude earthquake and aftershocks on Tuesday night and Wednesday caused disruptions for major telecommunications operators from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, China, Singapore and South Korea, with ripple effects spreading beyond Asia. (AP Photo) (AP)

Online gamer Daniel Lee, 28, said he was suffering in Hong Kong because he couldn't spend his usual eight to 10 hours a day playing games on the Internet.

"Most online games are routed through Taiwan, and now I can't play any of them. I can't contact a lot of people because my e-mail is down. It's a hassle and it's depressing, but I can't do anything about it," said Lee, who's unemployed.

Long lines formed at Hong Kong's airport because the computer system at the check-in counters for Taiwan's China Airlines weren't working.

A woman at the airline's hot line said the computer system had been down since Wednesday afternoon.

"We had to switch to manual services because the system in Taipei was affected by the quake," said the woman, who only gave her surname, Sze. "But all our computers are running normally now."

South Korea's biggest carrier, KT, said more than half of its 92 damaged lines should be fixed by the end of Thursday. One of the company's customers was the Foreign Ministry, which recovered its service.

In Japan, major carriers KDDI Corp. and NTT Communications said most fixed-line telephone services were up and running.

NTT spokeswoman Akiko Suzaki said that a full recovery would require a relaying of undersea cables and could take weeks.

Tim Dillon, senior research director with U.S.-based Current Analysis, which studies the telecom industry, said customers in Asia will have to get used to sluggish service in the next few weeks.

"We have a lot of traffic all going to alternate routings at the same time," Dillon said. "It's obviously going to result in slower speeds and congestion as everyone piles onto the same cable."