China International Internet Cut Off! - Updated

At approximately 7:00 this morning, the connection to most international websites disappeared. All day I was muttering under my breath that they had finally gone completely mad and blocked everything outside of China (Chinese sites still work fine.)

However, I now find that, in fact, the problem is that there was an earthquake in Taiwan and several undersea cables in the area carrying internet traffic have been destroyed. It is sometimes possible to get online (it has taken me hours to get here to post this), but bandwidth is extremely limited.

Besides not being able to reach favourite websites, email and messenger services are also affected.

There has been no statement yet as to when normal service may be restored.

UPDATE 28th December

According to China Daily

"Access to overseas websites from the Chinese mainland slowed to a crawl yesterday as a powerful earthquake off the Taiwan coast knocked off international undersea fibre-optic cables on Tuesday, affecting communications around Asia.
It is believed to be the most serious disruption since 2001, when a submarine cable connecting the mainland with the United States was cut off more than four times, mostly by fishing boats.

It is not clear when normal service will be restored.

China Telecom Corp, the mainland's largest fixed-line carrier, said six undersea cables were cut off 15 kilometres from the southern coast of Taiwan, causing severe Internet congestion on the mainland. International voice calls were also affected.

A survey by Internet portal Sina.com yesterday showed that 97 per cent of Internet users on the mainland had difficulty accessing overseas websites, and 57 per cent said their lives and work were affected. But access to mainland websites remains normal."

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