Asia hits telephone lines, Internet after attacks in U.S.
Asia hits telephone lines, Internet after attacks in U.S.
SINGAPORE (Reuters): Asians flooded phone lines to the United States to try to get in touch with relatives after a series of devastating terror attacks and millions of people flocked to Internet news sites to track the dramatic events.
Telecoms companies in the region reported surges in the number of calls and some difficulties in getting through but Internet access was little affected despite the intense interest in the airplane attacks in New York and Washington on Tuesday.
Singapore Telecommunications said on Wednesday that calls to the United States jumped by more than 35 times within two hours of the first attack on the World Trade Center.
Concerned Singaporeans made an estimated 200,000 calls from fixed and mobile lines.
"I tried about four times and got through on the fourth time," said Mabel Phoon, who was trying to reach a friend in New York. "The first three times, I just got an engaged tone or a message from the network saying they're not able to connect."
State-run Korea Telecom, the nation's largest fixed-line carrier, said traffic to the United States leapt 25 times but that connections were hampered by the sheer volume.
"My husband tried hard last night to call his sister, whose family lives in New Jersey," one woman said in Seoul. "He failed over and over again and finally reached her in the morning."
China's dominant telcos declined to provide statistics on calls but, judging by Internet activity overnight, the Chinese were clearly riveted by the news.
Internet portal Sohu.com Inc, which lets users send short text messages (SMS) to friends with cellphones, reported its highest usage to date.
"SMS traffic is even higher than it was when Beijing won the Olympics bid," spokeswoman Caroline Straathof said, referring to the mass elation on July 13 when Beijing was named host of the 2008 games.
Chinese Internet portal Sina.com had a record 40 million page views, or about five times normal traffic, in the 11 hours after the attack.
Communications in the United States were placed under heavy strain by millions of phone calls and heavy Internet use. The United States is a major Internet node in a global network connected via undersea cables and satellite links.
In Japan, top Web site Yahoo Japan and Nifty, the most popular Web service provider, saw no disruption to sites or e-mail traffic.
Web access providers in Singapore, South Korea and the Philippines said their connections were not affected but that some subscribers found it difficult to reach certain news sites.
"Most of the traffic is from Asia to the U.S. because the content is in the U.S.," said Poon Keen Mun, network manager for Singapore-based Pacific Internet.
"The bottleneck will be more at the end-portion on the Web servers on the U.S. side, for example the CNN site. It has nothing to do with the bandwidth."
Thai communications authorities described international call traffic as "very congested" after the attacks.
India's monopoly overseas telecommunications provider VSNL reported a similar story but said things were now back to normal, while the Philippine Long Distance Co saw "a very significant increase" in call traffic but said lines were not clogged.