Started about 14:00 yesterday (August 17, 2009) Hong Kong time access to majority of the Internet web services hosted outside of Asia was unreachable.
This first happened at my home with Netvigator Home Broadband service. I Tweeted about this hoping to get confirmation from others in Hong Kong. I also left to tried to see if the problem is localized to my building or district (Wanchai). I visited a Starbucks in Causeway Bay. After logging into PCCW WiFi connection at Starbucks I confirmed that most Internet web services were unreachable.
A friend then came and logged into the PCCW WiFi University service and was able to connect to each of the web services I was not able to. So I proceeded to try using Smartone-Vodafone to reach these Internet web services. I was too successful in accessing these Internet web services via Smartone-Vodafone’s HSDPA network.
This morning China Unicom released an explanation, as reported by Shanghai Daily, the reasons for yesterday’s Internet interruptions for its customers. PCCW’s Netvigator service released a short news item in their Customer Service section of their web site, placing blame on “severe weather conditions” that caused “multiple submarine cable faults” claiming that “Some customers may experience traffic congestions” with”international traffic”. I have encountered Error 500 for services I tried to access, but in Netvigator’s “news item”, it claims that their “systems are in normal operation and are working closely with partners to divert traffic”.
I cannot see how they can claim their “systems are in normal operation”, when I had paid for and expects the delivery of broadband Internet service at 8Mbps. So I called Netvigator’s Technical Support line, 1000, and filed a complaint and asked for details of compensation to customer for the interruption.
According to Netvigator service policy, if any interruptions is longer than 24 hours their customer is justified for compensation. The Technical Support representative tells me that I should call back after the service is back to “normal”, since they have no idea how long the interruptions will last.
I asked the Technical Support representative if all Netvigator customers will be compensated after the service returns to normal, and he gave me a convoluted answer that basically say that not all Netvigator customers will experience the problem. So I ask for my official complaint to be logged.
I suggest everyone who are effected by the PCCW’s Netvigator Broadband Home service interruption to call Netvigator and demand compensation and to ask for your complaint to be logged.
Today all PCCW Home Netvigator (one of the largest Broadband ISP in Hong Kong) customer encountered problems accessing web sites outside of Hong Kong. It started for me some time around 14:00 and is still an issue.
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