Internet service in Lienchiang County is to be slower than usual after damage was sustained to both undersea cables that connect with the outlying county, Chunghwa Telecom Co said on Wednesday.
A backup microwave transmission system has restored voice, national security and critical communications to normal, the telecom said.
However, mobile service, broadband and on-demand media would be slow due to the disruption, it added.
Photo courtesy of Chunghwa Telecom
An emergency request has been sent for an international cable repair vessel, although a timeline is unavailable, it said.
Network speeds would be slow county-wide, regardless of whether customers use Chunghwa or another telecom, National Communications Commission (NCC) spokesman Wong Po-tsung (翁柏宗) said.
The NCC has received a report from Chunghwa about the situation and has requested that it restore services as soon as possible, Wong said.
However, it would take some time for the repair ship to arrive, so service would remain slow for a while, he added.
The disruption comes after Chunghwa Telecom reported a break in its No. 2 undersea telecom cable connecting Taiwan proper with Lienchiang County on Thursday last week.
A break was reported in the sea about 52km from the generator on Dongyin Island (東引), the terminus of the cable connected to New Taipei City’s Tamsui District (淡水), it said.
Service was automatically switched to the No. 3 cable, which runs from Taoyuan to Nangan Island (南竿), it said.
The No. 3 cable at 12:32pm on Wednesday was suspected to have been damaged by a freighter, downing both connections to the county, the telecom said.
These were not the only incidents in recent years. In 2021, a trawler damaged a telecom cable near the county.
Most of the incidents have occurred in the seas between Nangan and Juguang Township (莒光) due to fishing vessels and Chinese dredgers, Wong said.
However, this latest break happened between Lienchiang and Taiwan proper, he said, calling it unusual.
To prevent such disruptions, a fourth cable is in the works, with the second stage expected to be completed in 2025, Wong said.
The first cable is no longer in use.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching