Taiwan Quake Takes Mainland Offline
As a result of the earthquake in the waters off the southern tip of Taiwan, internet access in mainland China has been disrupted.  Internet users in Shanghai early Wednesday reported outages or major slowing on all major websites including Google, Yahoo! and MSN.  All of Shanghai's major news sites were out of commission Wednesday morning.

The 6.7 or 7.1 magnitude earthquake (depending upon whom you ask) damaged undersea telecommunication cables in the waters east of Shanghai and west of Taiwan.  A China Netcom official quoted in a China Interfax report said of the internet outage, "The earthquake in Taiwan affected the undersea optical cable, which disrupted the Internet connection to international Web sites. We are trying to restore the Internet connection by using some back-up networks and satellite communication."

A Shanghai-based production director for a U.S. hat company complained he wasn't able to send or receive emails from late Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.  "My internet is totally non-functional," he said, "my employees are unable to reach me and are probably baffled as to why they have not heard from me.  We use the internet to communicate all day long."  This worker was not alone in his inability to do business Wednesday morning.  According to a Reuters Singapore story Wednesday:

China Telecommunications Group, the country's biggest fixed-line telephone operator and parent of China Telecom Corp., said the earthquakes had affected lines "from the Chinese mainland to places including the Taiwan area, the United States and Europe, and many have been cut."

"Internet connections have been seriously affected, and phone links and dedicated business lines have also been affected to some degree," it said.

Officials declined to give further details. "Undersea communications cables fall in the area of state secrets," said a ministry of communications official in Beijing.
                                                                                                               (Reuters 12/27/06)

And the damage from Tuesday night's earthquake is not limited to China.  South Korea's biggest broadband provider said many of their major customers had reported outages.  Currency traders in Tokyo reported that internet and phone outages had place the Australian dollar and British pound in a "tenuous situation."  Hong Kong's main telecom provider said data transfer there had been cut in half.  While on Tuesday, the Philippines was spared the predicted 3-foot tsunami and deaths and injuries in Taiwan were at a minimum, on Wednesday, the aftershocks of the earthquake can be felt all over Asia.

•Reuters: Asia Quakes Damage Cables; Internet, Banks Affected