Repairs on underwater internet and phone cables severely damaged late last year have been completed, 50 days after an earthquake off Taiwan wrecked havoc with communication services.
The Office of the Telecommunications Authority (Ofta) announced yesterday that repair work on the six damaged submarine cables had been finished.
The earthquake in Luzon Strait on December 26 damaged telecommunications and internet cables connecting Hong Kong to the US, Canada, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea.
'We are pleased to note that the repair of these cable systems is complete and all our external telecommunications services, including internet access services, have been fully restored.
'Our internet service providers have recovered their external connection capacity back to the normal operational level before the earthquakes,' an Ofta spokesman said.
The disaster, which slowed internet traffic to a crawl over the holiday period at the end of the year, highlighted a need for extra back-up capacity and contingency plans within the communications and internet service industry.
Simon Twiston-Davies, chief executive of the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia, said: 'This was a natural event nobody was able to foresee. Obviously, we'd like to have seen more capacity faster. This is a lesson learned that back-up capacity is needed.