Submarine Cable Break Affects China Unicom
Tencent Tech, 8/17/09
China Unicom (NYSE: CHU; 0762.HK; 600050.SH) has announced that a malfunction in its FNAL/RNAL submarine cable has impacted communications from China to the United States and Europe. Unicom is actively taking steps to restore normal service. Unicom's international service department reported that the FNAL/RNAL cable is a key information conduit for Northeast Asia. The cable was broken between Hong Kong to Taiwan on August 12 due to the Morakot typhoon, but as its backup route remained intact, telecom service was unaffected. Today at approximately 2:20 p.m., the backup route became damaged in the vicinity of Pusan, Korea, affecting international telecom service between China and countries in the direction of North America and Europe.
An industry source confirmed that the cable is broken, adding that the break would impact over 100Gbps of outgoing bandwidth. Today, access to international websites such as Yahoo has been sluggish, with widespread outages in access to MSN.
Keywords: China Unicom bandwidth Hong Kong cable submarine North America Taiwan 0762.HK 600050.SH CHU