Quake hits telco services

BY MARICEL E. ESTAVILLO, BusinessWorld Reporter Telecommunications services across Asia, the Philippines included, were disrupted Wednesday after an intensity 7.1 quake which shook Taiwan on Tuesday evening damaged a network of undersea cables on which the industry depends. Domestic industry sources polled by BusinessWorld described the quake’s impact as "serious" as submarine links used by local bandwidth providers were affected. No estimates were immediately available with respect to lost business. The affected submarine links include the Asia-Pacific Cable Network 2 (APCN2) underwater fiber-optic cable system used by Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), the Pan-Asian submarine cable system of Hong Kong-based Asia Netcom, the C2C Asian submarine cable system used by Globe Telecom, Inc. and the system used by Bayan Telecommunications, Inc. (BayanTel), to name a few. At its worst — between past midnight to Wednesday morning — bandwidth was cut in half, industry sources said. They pegged the normal data transfer rate for the industry at "more than" STM-16, which is equivalent to 2.488 gigabits per second. The reduced bandwidth resulted in a halt to Internet services or slower Internet connections. And in addition, "latency" — or the time needed to open an Internet connection — was described as "high." For PLDT and its cellular arm Smart Communications, Inc., international calls to China and Japan remained unavailable as of Wednesday afternoon, PLDT spokesperson Ramon I. Isberto said in a phone interview. "Subscribers are having a hard time making overseas calls, there has been difficulty in making calls even to the Middle East. [But] calls to the United States can already pass through," Mr. Isberto said. PLDT, in a statement, said "The international cable facilities being utilized by PLDT and Smart [Communications, Inc. ] have suffered major cable breaks due to the recent earthquake that took place near Taiwan." "As a result, IDD and broadband Internet services are currently intermittent. Domestic PLDT & Smart voice and data services are operating normally," PLDT said. PLDT said it was maximizing the use of available international linkages and finding alternative routes to speed up the restoration of services. "The international consortium operating the cable systems has already mobilized cable ships to repair the affected segments and restoration work is being conducted round the clock." Rival Globe, meanwhile, said the "entire country’s telecom service to the United States was disrupted." "The quakes damaged some undersea cable systems off the coast of Taiwan thus affecting communication services in Asia. Globe is doing everything possible to restore fully its services to Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and the United States which were partially affected," Globe said. BayanTel said its nationwide services suffered reduced capacity. "No amount [of damage] yet, but service was affected nationwide. It was initially reported midnight last night. We are now working on rerouting and restoration of services," BayanTel spokesperson John V. Rojo said. Local Internet data center and cable providers were also affected, as were call center operators. "Both of our IP (Internet Protocol) links and IPLC (international private leased circuit) are down as most of all major telecoms are affected," an official from IP-Converge said. IP-Converge is a wholly-owned unit of listed IPVG Corp. "There has been an IP outage due to APCN and C2C shunt fault due to earthquake in Taiwan ... Point of failure is Fangshan cable station, [but] there is a new route already this afternoon," Solid Group Inc. President David S. Lim said. A holding firm, Solid Group owns 100% of myDestiny which offers both broadband Internet access and cable channels. "It (the Internet connection) slowed down, some circuits are just now being restored but we are operational," PeopleSupport Phils. President Rainerio M. Borja said. For Danilo L. Reyes of ClientLogic Corp., he said it was fortunate that traffic or the number of calls from overseas clients are low during mornings.