Hong Kong officials pushed back by one week the estimated completion date for initial repairs of the undersea communication cables damaged by an earthquake because of a problem with a cable ship.
The first part of repair work on one cable will be completed around Jan. 16 as one of two ships which arrived at the scene "experienced a major fault" yesterday afternoon, Hong Kong's Office of the Telecommunications Authority said in a statement yesterday. The ship is under "urgent repair" in Taiwan and this will take about a week, the regulator said.
Telephone companies, including Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation's biggest carrier, are working to restore voice and Internet access after the powerful earthquake that hit southern Taiwan on Dec. 26, damaging a group of cables linking Asia to the rest of the world. Hong Kong's regulator had said the first part of repairs on one cable would be completed by Jan. 9.
Repair of most other cables is expected to be completed by the end of this month, the regulator said in the statement. Three more ships were on their way to the cables, the regulator said on Saturday.
Most Internet users will continue to experience slow access and should minimize non-essential activities that demand large bandwidth over international connections, the authority said.
PCCW Ltd (
Mobile users should expect a longer delay for text messages to and from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the US and Canada as the new year approaches, because of increased traffic, the Hong Kong regulator's statement said.
"Phone calls and Internet connections are forecast to rise in time for the New Year, but we have prepared contingency plans in case anything happens," Kim Cheol-kee, a spokesman for KT Corp, South Korea's biggest phone and Internet company, said on Saturday.
Singapore Telecommunications Ltd, Southeast Asia's largest phone operator, said on Saturday that voice and Internet access were "back to normal."
In China, Internet services will not be back to normal until the middle of this month, a news report yesterday quoted the country's biggest telephone company as saying.
The Xinhua news agency quoted an unidentified China Telecom Corp (
"Heavy seas have made the repair work very difficult," the official was quoted as saying.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”