Bad weather had again delayed repair efforts to undersea cables damaged by an earthquake, Hong Kong's telecom regulator, quoted by an AFP report, said.
The AFP report quoted Hong Kong's Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) as saying that most of the seven submarine cables, damaged by a powerful 7.1-magnitude temblor off Taiwan on December 26, have now been fixed but that one will take longer than estimated.
Repair work will be completed at the end of February, instead of mid-February as had been anticipated earlier, the agency said.
'The repair work of one section of a cable will now complete by the end of next month,' OFTA director general Au Man-ho was quoted as saying. 'Bad weather, technical problems and other reasons are causing the delay.'
However, he said Internet providers had diverted Web traffic and that the delay was not having a significant impact on Internet services in Hong Kong, the report said.
Au said a new warning system will be set up next month to alert the public if a similar Internet breakdown occurs again.
The report said the earthquake snapped several international telecom cables, sparking widespread communication disruption in Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and elsewhere. Problems also occurred as far away as Australia.