internet disruption after the Taiwanese earthquake.
Au Man-ho, director-general of telecoms watchdog Ofta, said that under the existing notification mechanism, operators were not required to make immediate reports about cable damage to the authorities.
Six of the seven main submarine cables linking internet and phone services to the US, Canada, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan were damaged following Tuesday's quake.
"Even if one cable is damaged, internet traffic can be diverted to other routes and the effect is quite insignificant. Sometimes, cable faults occur somewhere very distant from Hong Kong," Mr Au said, adding that he believed the extent of the damage caused by the earthquake was unprecedented.
Defending the delay in making a public announcement, he said: "Members of the public already know the internet traffic is congested, so it is not meaningful for us to issue a press release telling them something they already know.
"It is more important for us to find out the degree of damage, how much time will be needed to recover the system and the progress of repairs so that we can inform the public."
Acting financial secretary Stephen Ip Shu-kwan said improving contingency plans and methods for releasing information was the responsibility of all parties.
"I think it is important for the cable operators, internet service providers, the government, Ofta and telecommunications companies to consider what happened and see what we need to do to improve the situation," he said.
Information technology sector lawmaker Sin Chung-kai said improving the reporting system would not mean amending or creating legislation if the government could negotiate a mandatory notification mechanism through the licensing requirements of internet service providers.
However, Internet Society chairman Charles Mok Nai-kwong warned that it may be difficult to design a suitable mechanism.
"The internet service providers are open to discussion and to working out a better system, but their biggest worry is whether the rules on when to notify will be clear and whether they will be forced to make notifications about every minor outage," he said. "It's not so easy to draw that line."
He said requiring local providers to notify the government would not have helped in the latest crisis, as the providers only had second-hand information from the undersea-cable operators.
"Many of those operators don't have offices in Hong Kong, and those that do, do not have a licensing relationship with Ofta, which may have been why Ofta had such trouble getting information.
"I think the problem had more to do with the government's way of not announcing anything until they had full information."
Political analyst James Sung Lap-kung said the slow response suggested the government had underestimated the seriousness of the problem and had little sense of political alertness.
"The government's mentality is that they are just a regulator of private businesses, and so they are only responsible for passing on information from the various companies," he said. "All they needed was to put out a very simple statement to put people's minds at ease."
State of affairs
Telecoms operators
PCCW: IDD calls have resumed but Taiwan is experiencing congestion. Internet traffic to Japan, South Korea and Taiwan is still congested
Hutchison Global Communications: service has almost returned to normal
Hong Kong Broadband Network: 70 per cent of internet bandwidth is available, IDD calls to Taiwan have resumed
Wharf T&T: 90 per cent of IDD calls have resumed. Congestion experienced when browsing websites in US, Japan and Korea
Banks
HSBC: services have improved since Wednesday, when many customers' connections to some of the banks' internet banking services were affected
Hang Seng: slowdown in corporate electronic banking has improved after rerouting
Standard Chartered: operations including online banking are normal
DBS: some individual cases of slow log-ons, but fewer than on Wednesday
(STANDARD) 12月 30日 星期六 03:30AM Net users to face longer delay
It will take longer than the originally expected week to get regional phone and Internet connections totally restored following Tuesday night's earthquake off Taiwan, the Office of Telecommunications Authority said.
Initial tests conducted by repair ships that arrived at the scene of the damaged undersea cables Thursday were hampered by poor weather that delayed repairs.
The latest service status released by OFTA Friday showed local telecommunications services with the mainland and Macau at normal levels. IDD and roaming calls to Taiwan have been restored to half the normal level with full restoration expected Saturday.
Overseas phone calls from Hong Kong using call cards are also expected to be back to normal Saturday.
IDD and roaming calls to South Korea are still seriously congested as are overseas calls into Hong Kong via call cards.
Internet access is expected to improve from day to day. OFTA asks the public to be frugal in its cyber use to minimize strain on limited connectivity.
Non-urgent calls to Taiwan and South Korea are to be discouraged and overseas callers attempting to connect to Hong Kong are advised to use mobile phones and fixed-line phones instead of call cards.
The public has also been asked to refrain from engaging in nonessential downloads and activities that require large bandwidth over international connections.
Services such as online banking were intermittently affected at some leading banks, with HSBC posting a notice warning on its commercial Web site that users may experience problems with online services.
However, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority is confident the banking sector will cope.
"Banks have reported that response times are slower than usual for online services, but overall the banking system hasn't been affected," an HKMA spokesman said.
With business and household Internet users facing interruptions of more than a week before repairs on the damaged undersea cables can be completed, HKdotCOM chief executive officer Maren Leizaola said his company has managed to take advantage of the situation.
"New revenue streams on e-mail service alone have seen my company make in two or three days what we normally make in a couple of months," Leizaola said.
"We're talking tens of thousands of dollars per day in new revenue."
Owing to the demand for mainstream Internet access, HKdotCOM has managed to capitalize on those parties who have been unable to access their regular e-mail accounts.
"As we specialize in providing e-mail services and we can set up a secondary company e-mail service in under an hour, a lot of people have been signing up with us. Our edge is that we're reliable.
"We're here to provide essential services for companies with monthly turnovers of millions of US dollars," Leizaola said.
"We spend three or four times what our competitors spend on Internet connections, but we're buying quality. We have got four diversified connections and, as we are configured with multiple ISPs, our services keep working perfectly."
Since Thursday, HKdotCOM has also been helping Hong Kong Web sites hit by the outage to be available to users overseas.
"I hope Internet users now understand that free e-mail is not free - it costs thousands of dollars when it stops working," Leizaola said.
