The broken undersea cable linking Shanghai to the west coast of the United States was fixed this afternoon, and Internet access was restored at 7:05 PM after a trial connection.
Jointly invested by 23 telecom companies around the world, the fiber-optic cable was put into operation on January 19 last year. As the main telecom cable connecting Asia and the United States, the severed cable caused failure access to overseas websites across China and apparently sent reverberations throughout the Asia-Pacific region, with Hong Kong and Singapore reporting reduced online speeds.
China telecom rent international satellites and other channels to direct the information traffic soon after the accident on February 9. One-third of the traffic was restored but most north American websites remained inaccessible.
A Japanese "KDD Ocean Link" ship arrived at the spot of the break to help fix the cable, and all the work will be finished by February 22, one day earlier than scheduled, according to Shanghai Telecom Corporation senior engineer Liu Shaokuan.
(Xinhua 02/19/2001)
