Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation’s biggest telecom operator, said yesterday it was trying to bring back online half of the disrupted overseas Internet connections and voice services after six undersea cables connecting Taiwan with other Asian countries ruptured during Typhoon Morakot.
The company said it would do so by renting bandwidth from overseas telecoms companies.
Mudslides caused by Morakot in the seabed near Pingtung and Taitung Counties damaged several undersea cables and disrupted primarily corporate customers’ Internet access and telephone connections to neighboring areas, the company said in a statement.
The damage caused by Morakot was as serious as that in 2006, when an earthquake in southern Taiwan broke undersea cables.
The company said it was aiming to restore at least half of communication services for corporate customers by last night by renting bandwidth from overseas telecom companies, including China Telecom Ltd (中國電信).
With support from foreign telecom companies, Chunghwa Telecom has resumed most telephone services for general subscribers, but voice services to China, Singapore, the Philippines and Hong Kong remain patchy.
The company said that it would dispatch cable ships to fix the broken cables as soon as possible.
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