December 31st, 2007
The Chinese Internet Crash Of 2007
In late December of last year, a 7.1 earthquake off the coast of Taiwan severely damaged Asia’s undersea fiber-optic cables, disrupting telecommunication circuits across the continent.
China and Southeast Asia saw their communications capacity fall to between 2 and 10 percent, and though a portion of service has since been rerouted to alternative fixed lines and suicidally slow satellite transmissions, the P.R.C. has yet to fully recover from the technological aftershocks, what Mainlanders are now referring to as the “World Wide Wait.