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A 6.7 magnitude earthquake occurred recently off the southern tip of Taiwan, causing the cutoff or slowing of phone and Internet traffic in Asia from Beijing to Bangkok. Damaged were up to a dozen fiber-optic cables that cross the ocean floor south of Taiwan to carry traffic between China, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, the U.S., and Taiwan. Chunghwa Telecom Company, the largest phone company in Taiwan, said the quake damaged lines that might be repaired in up to three weeks. Taiwan lost almost all phone capacity to Japan and mainland China, and service to the U.S. was also badly hit, with a loss of 60 percent of capacity. According to Stephan Becker, analyst with research firm TeleGeography, the telecommunication failure was the largest in years. Mr. Beckert expressed surprise at the extent of the outages, since Taiwan is a well-connected system and its cables are cut and disrupted frequently. However, because there is sufficient backup capacity on other lines to keep traffic moving without customers perceiving any interruption, the cut lines had generally not been as much of a problem. Internet Traffic Report, a website, said packet loss rose extensively during the earthquake, and a spokeswoman for eBay also said users have had some problems gaining access to eBay's Asian websites.
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