Taiwan EarthQuake – Internet Slow down (Updated)

Still remember WHAT happened exactly 2 years on 26th December? Yes, I’m sure we still remember the disasterous earthquake which triggered the deadly tsunami. On that unfortunate day, the tsunami swipe out large part of India, Thailand, Sumatra and some parts of North Penisula Malaysia.

Yesterday, on the anniversary of this faithful day, a 7.1-magnitude earthquake off the south coast of Taiwan, Heng Chun, on Tuesday night. Thank god this time it did not trigger another deadly tsunami.

Nevertheless, the earthquake apparently damaged the vast network of underwater cables that enables modern communication such as internet phone calls and most importantly THE INTERNET. According to South Korea’s information and communication ministry, all six major under sea fibreoptic cables off Taiwan were hit. This causing major distruption across Asia which includes Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong.

No wonder I experienced one of the slowest internet connection in Singapore for 5 years. Imagine a connection slower than 56Kpbs dial up connection on a 12000Kpbs (shared) Starhub cable broadband. I couldn’t even access my favourite football website Soccernet and blogs.

Even now I still experience very slow connection to certain websites. It’s FRUSTRATING!

Hmm…I wonder how it is with the internet connection in Malaysia. Normally, the Streamyx (Malaysia major broadband provider by Telekom Malaysia) is already so screwed up. It must have brought the connection in Malaysia down to almost 0, right? Friends in Malaysia, am I right?

According the news, the damaged fireoptic cables would take at least 3 weeks to fix. It’s gonna be a slow 3 weeks. Sad…

*update: Just to prove someone wrong, below are the people in experiencing slow Internet connection in Malaysia and Streamyx’s connection indeed sucks big time:

• Menj : I am cruising the Internet at slooowwwwwww speed
• myAsylum : Slow moving packets
• Letters From the Equator : The Network is So SloWWwwww
• Ronn76 : Slow Connection…
• Paris Beaverbanks : Slow in connection and prayers for a friend in Taiwan
• Jeff Ooi : Slow Streamyx to US and Europe?

Well, so are you the only one there using some super duper dedicated connection which you layed the fiberoptic cables yourself connecting to in the Internet that you are not affected at all? Even TM Net themselve announce about their internet connection outage. Bakka!!

I’m not against you but I just hate the way you put it in the comment. It’s just disgraceful for not getting the facts right and yet saying things in a sarcastic way with or without the intend to provoke.

By the way, I’m a Malaysian and I’m proud of it!