It is funny how just after I wrote a blog about the freedom and the speed of the internet in Hong Kong, the entire Internet infrastructure in Hong Kong fell apart.
On Dec. 26th at 826pm an earthquake struck southern Taiwan and severed all of the four large fiber optic cables that carry information (internet/phone) between Taiwan and Hong Kong. I was aware that these cables have been laid throughout the world under the oceans, but I had no idea that these cables could snap so easily.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I had no idea that the global internet was so vulnerable to nature.
I went a full two days without checking my email - something that hasn't happened since I was 13 years old. It was an odd sensation to say the least.
I have heard that mainland China has had some difficulty as well - but HK was hit the worst.
On a side note, and a more important note, apparently there was a lot of damage in southern Taiwan but loss of life was minimal. Exact numbers are not known. The big story in the reporting has been the reduced internet access. Second side note, the Taiwan earthquake occurred exactly 2 years after the quake that struck off the coast of Indonesia unleashing a tsunami that killed 1/4 of a million people and left over 2 million people homeless.
Glad to be blogging again.
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
China
ryan@ryanpyle.com
www.ryanpyle.com
Skype: ryanpyle
Thursday, December 28, 2006
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I have been reading your blog(Im a student and have been looking at your images.), and I thought about the quake when I saw the news. Hope everything is going well over there now.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I am not even sure what is going on in Taiwan at the moment. There is almost no news of the quake and what happened on the land. Everyone is talking about the disruption to the internet. It's the big story. Imagine if the cables between the EU and the USA went down for two weeks. Imagine the communications nightmare that would occur.
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