Taiwan Earthquake Disrupts Bali's Telecommunications

(12/30/2006)

A powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake that struck southern Taiwan on Wednesday, December 27, 2006, has wreaked havoc on Internet and telecommunications systems stretching from northern Asia to Australia. The quake, which severed international fiber-optic telecommunication cables in Taiwan, has vastly reduced the traffic carrying capacity of Internet Service roviders (ISP) and international long-distance service in the region.

In the days following the quake, Internet users in Bali and the rest of Indonesia found themselves unable to access most overseas websites and the transmission rate for Internet communications agonizingly slow. Indonesian officials estimate that Indonesian telecommunication providers were operating at 17% of their normal capacity. Operators in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysian were also all reporting service impediments in the aftermath of the Taiwanese earthquake.

Indonesian Regulations Impeding Rapid Recovery

Meanwhile, Indonesian regulations limiting the ability of local ISPs to use foreign satellite systems are thwarting efforts to reroute telecommunications traffic over alternative satellite systems.

The Jakarta Post quoted a spokesman for the Department of Communication and Information as saying that government was still considering what steps to take, claiming the Department "needed more time to grasp the urgency of the situation."

Helping to further fuel the growing frustration of local businesses with the government's seeming lack of a "sense of urgency" in dealing with the communications crisis, the Director General of Post and Telecommunications, Basuk Yusuf Iskandar, suggested that Internet users in Indonesia must learn to live with the lack of service urging people "to fast for a month" from their regular diet of electronic communications.

balidiscovery.com

Using off-shore connections, back up systems and other improvisations, balidiscovery.com continues to maintain booking and information services to its clients with only minor disruption.