Internet Recovery Continues Slowly

[george]

Internet recovery continues slowly

CAT capacity restored to 50%

Millions of frustrated Internet users across Asia have slowly regained access to overseas websites, three days after an earthquake off the coast of Taiwan snapped several vital undersea cables.

Connections remained slow in Malaysia and Thailand, where communications authority CAT Telecom said capacity had only been restored to 50 per cent.

"Thailand is still lucky compared to other countries where Internet connections have totally collapsed," a CAT official said.

Telecoms operators across the region re-routed Internet links to circumvent the ruptured lines off the southern part of the island, as engineers donned diving suits to assess the damage and begin repairs.

"Everything is improving now," said a spokesman for PCCW, Hong Kong's largest fixed-line operator.

"All international call and roaming services have gone back to normal, including to Taiwan, although some websites are still congested," he said.

Hong Kong's telecommunications authority said five maintenance ships had been dispatched to repair six fiber-optic cables, which handle about 90 per cent of telecommunications capacity in the area.

"Overall there has been some improvement in access to the Internet today. However, most users will continue to experience slow access," it said in a statement.

It added some ships arrived at the scene Thursday, but the weather had obstructed survey and assessment work.

"Initial surveys indicated that damage to the submarine cables was substantial," it said.

The authority said it may take longer to repair the cables than the original estimate of five to seven days.

Taiwan's largest phone company, Chunghwa Telecom, has commissioned three more ships to assist the repair effort. The cables ruptured following Tuesday's 7.1-magnitude earthquake, which killed two people on the island.

An official from Chunghwa said voice traffic to the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia remained relatively weak, but was improving.

Internet users frustrated by their inability to log onto e-mail accounts, news websites and online banking services -- conveniences that have become part of modern life -- found access across the region Friday improved, but still patchy.

Southeast Asia's largest telecom operator, Singapore Telecommunications, said it had established a "command centre" to restore full service as quickly as possible.

"Internet access to all websites has been normalised for emailing, browsing and online transactions," it said in a statement. "Access to services such as gaming and video downloading, which require higher bandwidth, may experience some delays."

The company said SingTel BlackBerry service had been fully restored.

"As part of our cable traffic redirection effort, traffic to the US is being re-routed via Europe or Australia, as well as using other channels such as satellite links and landlines," it said.

In South Korea, Hong Seong-Yong, an official at the communications ministry, said: "Recovery work is moving ahead quickly, with nearly all financial institutions, including foreign banks, back to normal overnight."

The Chinese state-run Xinhua news agency characterised the week's web difficulties as "cyber-chaos", with a source at China Netcom saying progress on restoring service had been slow.

China Netcom said two boats had been sent out to start repairing the damaged lines and three others would soon depart, the China Daily reported.

Indonesia's telecoms authority said it could take up to a month to restore Internet capacity, which had fallen to just 17 per cent following Tuesday's quake.

"This incident is a major problem for us," director general of post and telecommunications Basuki Yusuf Iskandar was quoted as saying by The Jakarta Post.

Analysts said it was too early to estimate the total financial losses caused by the week's Internet mayhem. Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom put preliminary losses at 150 million Taiwan dollars (4.6 million US).

"They are the hardest hit, I would say," noted Sachin Mittal with DBS Vickers Securities in Singapore. "Probably all the (other) telcos will be less than Chunghwa."

-- Agencies 2006-12-30

[yeti]

Don't know for others, but for me it's back to normal in Bkk with True. Maybe a bit slower on Ftp, but not much.

[iang]

Definitely a HUGE improvement using my TT&T ADSL connection today in Chiang Mai. Nearly as per normal, although reduced business bandwidth use on the Saturday prior to New Year may be assisting things?

[astral]

Malaysia is working, but very slow.

Mind you "normal" here is slow anyway.

They always refer me to their "speed test" site when I complain.

Today there is a 30sec delay before the speed test even start..............

They cannot blame that on International connections, the site is down in KL.

By comparison the Thaivisa speed test starts instantateously and gives better readings,

so an problems here in Malaysia are home grown.

[Kaojai]

Don't know for others, but for me it's back to normal in Bkk with True. Maybe a bit slower on Ftp, but not much.

Golly where are all the resident experts. I thought, according to the usual chorus, the whole problem was due to Thai incompetence! It must be comforting to cozy up to your cherished prejudices.

I just cannot believe that an organisation such as TrueInternet only has 1 cable ....and this for a country with lots of trading and many international companies...

I only can say this is disrupting normal business in a big way

what is happening in this beautiful country ?

what is this country doing to its people and the many farangs who are supporting their Thai families ...

I only can shake my head and silently hope it will beter over time ?

That is what you get, when you allow companies like CAT to monopolize the international backbones. It is criminal intend of the Thai authorities that they do not allow organisation like NECTEC to run an backup. They will never learn however. It is too cozy being made important. On top of that CAT is one of the least important customers as they have negotiated a very low price for the least optimized service. Who cares if Thailand stays at the bottom of the food chain, certainly not the current government.

That was smart to route all our traffic through Taiwan don't you think? T.I.T. Will never learn just about sums it up.

As Archie Bunker elequently put it - "Crapola".

The thais are too cheap to create a second BIG backbone. I did a traceroute earlier, my trip to the USA went through France.

[risky11]

I have not been able to get through by phone to the Philippines from the USA in in 5 days. Get a busy signal every time.... I though all phone calls were bounced off sattelites before - and perhaps they are. But I guess the sattelite receivers are not in the Phils, but in HK or Taiwan. However, i am able to chat on Yahoo IM with the Phils, no problem.

And I have been chatting with my thai gf in BKK using MSN IM w/o interuption. btw, I sent her some money via PayPal, but she can't figure out how to open an account and receive her cash! If anyone can help her, let me know. Thanks.

[yeti]

Golly where are all the resident experts. I thought, according to the usual chorus, the whole problem was due to Thai incompetence! It must be comforting to cozy up to your cherished prejudices.

Maybe on vacations. Maybe they realised that the problem was affecting all asia the same, and it has nothing to do with thai being (in)competent or not.

[Greer]

Good to see that things are on the improve, but I am still surprised that there appears not to be any automated redundant systems... here I mean a system that is NOT used or one where one part may fail without affecting overall service efficiency to any great extent.

Hmmm

[yeti]

Btw, I sent her some money via PayPal, but she can't figure out how to open an account and receive her cash! If anyone can help her, let me know. Thanks.

I can help, for merely 60% of the amount, 10.000 THB minimum.

[razino]

Malaysia is working, but very slow.

Mind you "normal" here is slow anyway.

They always refer me to their "speed test" site when I complain.

Today there is a 30sec delay before the speed test even start..............

They cannot blame that on International connections, the site is down in KL.

By comparison the Thaivisa speed test starts instantateously and gives better readings,

so an problems here in Malaysia are home grown.

Depends on the area. I am at Pandan and on the next morning after the quake it was no connection to streamyx at all but by late afternoon I was able to connect tho' the line was a bit slow. In less than 24 hours it's back to normal for me here at 512kbps (RM66.00) package.

[nikster]

Good to see that things are on the improve, but I am still surprised that there appears not to be any automated redundant systems... here I mean a system that is NOT used or one where one part may fail without affecting overall service efficiency to any great extent.

Hmmm

I think you are mistaken. By definition, the internet is redundant. It's just that usually, most traffic goes all over the same routers and redundancy, though part of the core design of the internet protocols, is usually not very high on the list of priorities of the providers. They care more about fast access than redundancy.

So when the link China - US is severed, all traffic out of Thailand is routed via Europe. Redundant, no? The problem is just that the bandwidth is not adequate so it slows down for all. Distribution of available bandwidth is also pretty bad when the systems get overloaded, resulting in some people surfing normally whereas others have no access at all.

I had pretty good access for most of the day of the quake and the days after. Only during some hours in the evening it went down to 0. But it seemed to be dependent on the DSL provider - I used several different ones from different places in Chiang Mai. Some didn't work at all, others were fine.

Now things are slow, but working reliably, my downloads from the U.S. are around 35KB/s where usually they are 65KB/s and up.

On the up-side - yeah I am a hopeless optimist - through this whole disaster, the operators will put more effort into redundancy in the future. Because of the nature of the Internet, that is rather easy to accomplish. The only reason it's not better is that it's not needed very often, and no-one pays more money for one provider over the other because they have "better redundancy". It's a difficult concept to sell - but much less so since the quake. Suddenly, redundancy will be in demand whereas before no one's heard of it or cared about it.

PS: One weird effect is that phone lines to Europe are now pretty bad, but Skype works normally. So Skype suddenly has way better quality of service than paid-for calls.

Edited December 30, 2006 by nikster

[jimbeam1]

I have found everything fine. Sent loads of Email and recieved. Since earthquake. Only slight problem, Thaivisa pages taking longer to load. jb1

[jimbeam1]

I have found everything fine. Sent loads of Email and recieved. Since earthquake. Only slight problem, Thaivisa pages taking longer to load. Ps i am in England at the moment.

[rahyumdee]

...I booked my one-way ticket to Cambodia two hours ago.

Internet access there is about 10 years behind the rest of the world. Plan to spend a lot of time on the beach...

Good luck.

[Gongchime]

I'm not sure but suspect if you put 2 redundant cables next to the other undersea cable all in an earthquake then you'll have three broken cables instead of one. Nature is going to win.

[ThailandTony]

Like other Falangs earning a crust for their Thai families at home I have been "nutmegged" since Boxing Day. I work in Bahrain and have a home (under-construction) in Chaiyaphum. Transferred money to pay builder (under $20k for all you snipers out there) on 24/12 and still not in the account by yesterday and banks don't open til Wednesday now so construction on hold for a week.....sweet. It's a holiday in all arab countries since Thursday til Wednesday so good time to catch up with whats going on at home but again cannot make any mobile calls to Thailand since 26th....and the long-haired General gets a bit "jai lon" when she can't track down her fella 24/7.....yeah so how to keep the Mrs happy.....dadada....she doesn't get the money she's expecting and can't speak to the perp' on the dog'n'bone (thats phone to all you non-Eastenders watchers...we know who we are guys...right?).....so that rambling must give you an insight into my state of mind during this festive season. I was cheered to hear that every country in Asia seems to be sending a small flotilla of ships....to join the other ships that can't work coz of bad weather and that the cynics in LOS have found another reason to bad mouth the short-haired Generals.

Deck the halls everyone.....Merry Christmas and roll on 2007 x

[LifeConvo]

Why does the article mention that the initial repair time was estimated at 3-5 days, yet these "breaking news" emails I've been getting from thaivisa put the time at 2-3 weeks?

[ThailandTony]

Why does the article mention that the initial repair time was estimated at 3-5 days, yet these "breaking news" emails I've been getting from thaivisa put the time at 2-3 weeks?

Crisis management! No comms = banking meltdown and we all know what happens when the markets get jumpy. Right now the only improvements you are experiencing is due to re-routed comms. Now they have dropped a diver or 2 onto the location they can give an accurate assessment and all of the commercial comms have been re-routed in the interim so its mainly the domestic users who will suffer for the 3-4 weeks (weather permitting) it will take to fix this. We had exactly the same issue in Dubai last year after the Pakistan earthquake. Same same but different.

Sawasdee pee mai!

[aznyron]

Internet recovery continues slowly

CAT capacity restored to 50%

Millions of frustrated Internet users across Asia have slowly regained access to overseas websites, three days after an earthquake off the coast of Taiwan snapped several vital undersea cables.

Connections remained slow in Malaysia and Thailand, where communications authority CAT Telecom said capacity had only been restored to 50 per cent.

"Thailand is still lucky compared to other countries where Internet connections have totally collapsed," a CAT official said.

Telecoms operators across the region re-routed Internet links to circumvent the ruptured lines off the southern part of the island, as engineers donned diving suits to assess the damage and begin repairs.

"Everything is improving now," said a spokesman for PCCW, Hong Kong's largest fixed-line operator.

"All international call and roaming services have gone back to normal, including to Taiwan, although some websites are still congested," he said.

Hong Kong's telecommunications authority said five maintenance ships had been dispatched to repair six fiber-optic cables, which handle about 90 per cent of telecommunications capacity in the area.

"Overall there has been some improvement in access to the Internet today. However, most users will continue to experience slow access," it said in a statement.

It added some ships arrived at the scene Thursday, but the weather had obstructed survey and assessment work.

"Initial surveys indicated that damage to the submarine cables was substantial," it said.

The authority said it may take longer to repair the cables than the original estimate of five to seven days.

Taiwan's largest phone company, Chunghwa Telecom, has commissioned three more ships to assist the repair effort. The cables ruptured following Tuesday's 7.1-magnitude earthquake, which killed two people on the island.

An official from Chunghwa said voice traffic to the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia remained relatively weak, but was improving.

Internet users frustrated by their inability to log onto e-mail accounts, news websites and online banking services -- conveniences that have become part of modern life -- found access across the region Friday improved, but still patchy.

Southeast Asia's largest telecom operator, Singapore Telecommunications, said it had established a "command centre" to restore full service as quickly as possible.

"Internet access to all websites has been normalised for emailing, browsing and online transactions," it said in a statement. "Access to services such as gaming and video downloading, which require higher bandwidth, may experience some delays."

The company said SingTel BlackBerry service had been fully restored.

"As part of our cable traffic redirection effort, traffic to the US is being re-routed via Europe or Australia, as well as using other channels such as satellite links and landlines," it said.

In South Korea, Hong Seong-Yong, an official at the communications ministry, said: "Recovery work is moving ahead quickly, with nearly all financial institutions, including foreign banks, back to normal overnight."

The Chinese state-run Xinhua news agency characterised the week's web difficulties as "cyber-chaos", with a source at China Netcom saying progress on restoring service had been slow.

China Netcom said two boats had been sent out to start repairing the damaged lines and three others would soon depart, the China Daily reported.

Indonesia's telecoms authority said it could take up to a month to restore Internet capacity, which had fallen to just 17 per cent following Tuesday's quake.

"This incident is a major problem for us," director general of post and telecommunications Basuki Yusuf Iskandar was quoted as saying by The Jakarta Post.

Analysts said it was too early to estimate the total financial losses caused by the week's Internet mayhem. Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom put preliminary losses at 150 million Taiwan dollars (4.6 million US).

"They are the hardest hit, I would say," noted Sachin Mittal with DBS Vickers Securities in Singapore. "Probably all the (other) telcos will be less than Chunghwa."

-- Agencies 2006-12-30

Hello can any one give me cat website I would like to check there internet connection to see what they offer thank you Ronnie

[batami]

For the benefit of all of those who seems to take any opportunity to snipe at Thailand and Thais (why are you here I wonder – but that’s another story?) my offices are in Singapore and China and my desk is in Chiang Mai. Arguably Singapore is the most technologically advanced country in Asia and they have had more than comparable problems to Thailand and they are still in process of being fixed. My Singapore Internet provider is issuing bulletins to the effect that today is 80% service (30th) . China office still has some problems but is functioning. It is a credit to all concerned that the internet service came back as fast as it did. The internet is a complex web of connectivity across the globe and those who believe another cable (at the cost of how many bn of dollars) would be the answer - you are in the days of under sea wire telecom cables being laid out across the Atlantic I am afraid....

The internet is a marvel of the age and - yes - sometimes things go wrong - but this recovery has been pretty impressive given the magnitude of the problem.

That’s my two pen'th -- for what it's worth ... feel free to take it or leave it --- and a Happy New Year to one and all.

[sensei]

My ADSL line here in Saraburi is working fine. It's a tad slower than usual but still good enough. I got it back after a day. When I found out I couldn't connect to any site outside LoS, I had a bad case of CLAUSTROPHOBIA. I felt like I was suddenly stuck in the middle of nowhere. Is there anyone else out there who felt that way?

Edited December 30, 2006 by sensei

[Guest RealEstateBroker]

Bangkokbank.com is up and running again at full speed from my US location. Yesterday I was trying to pay some bill's and it took at least 2 min's or so to go from from one page to the next one. Just paid a few more today and really quick, the same as before the problem.

[Heng]

I'm running a couple of net options: my TT&T adsl in Pattaya is running at about 80%. More than fast enough. About the same for my True adsl in Bangkok. In the car: AIS GPRS is however noticeably slower, almost unworkable. KSC/Play dial up working at about 50%, won't download pop3 email. CS Loxinfo working at about 80%, no problems with pop3 or accessing any websites with relatively good speed.

[sonthaya]

It must be a very slow recovery, the funny thing is it appears to affect my connection to Thaivisa. com more than other forums, I have a very good connection to Phuket-Info.Com, but kepp on loosing Thaivisa.com.

Are we having a server problem or do they use a different provider ?

[tropo]

My TT&T has been working ok tonight, but my CAT has been out all evening and morning.

[Tony Clifton]

I m still having problems with some sites abroad. No downloads or video feeds yet.

[nucopia]

I m still having problems with some sites abroad. No downloads or video feeds yet.

Dito big time for ME ! cant log into my web site and FTP hahahaha whats that ! my speed is like dial up from the 80's any one have any idea when we can expect to be back to normal ? ( if any of us ever were ) My biggest issue is with sites an servers based in the U.S, is there any sites out there keeping tabs on the repair situation or were I can get news on this ?

Edited January 2, 2007 by nucopia

[cclub75]

PS: One weird effect is that phone lines to Europe are now pretty bad, but Skype works normally. So Skype suddenly has way better quality of service than paid-for calls.

Indeed Niskter. I had the same experience, the days following the earthquake.

It was difficult to reach mobile phone numbers in Thailand and Vietnam for instance (from France). But meanwhile, with Skype Out it was OK ! Magic of technologies.

[robint]

hi all and hny

is anyone else out there experiencing hoorrible porblems with the net ever since the explosions?

i cant access hot mail or google via I explorer or firefox.

keeps redirecting me to the thai search engine NIPA which says it cant find google

the only way to get through to either is via a tortuous anonymous proxy server. I was ok before xmas till the cables broke, then 3 days without hotmail, then the explosions and now its a nightmare.

have they gone mad on censorship or something else wierd. ive never ever experienced such problems and i am reasonably savvy

just cos i'm paranoid doesnt make me wrong

see what the stock market does today

[Tony Clifton]

Can now download at 7k, usual is 103k. At this rate, everything should be back to normal in 15 weeks!