For about a day, businesses and computer users have been complaining about the near-shutdown of Internet services in China. According to information from China Unicom, due to the FNAL/RNAL cable breakdown caused by Typhoon Morakot last week, the Internet communication between China and other countries and regions such as the United States and Europe has been affected.

The FNAL/RNAL route is an important information channel in northern Asian areas. Because of Typhoon Morakot, the cable from Hong Kong to Taiwan was damaged on August 12. However, the communication was not affected because the protection routing was not interrupted at that time. Unfortunately, the protection routing of this cable near Pusan, South Korea, was damaged around 14:20 on August 17, leading to impacts of varying levels on China's international communication to North America and Europe.

China Unicom is cooperating with relevant cable organizations and overseas partners to recover the communication systems as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, another Chinese telecom operator, China Telecom, also said it is engaged in the recovery of the FNAL cable used by the company. According to China Telecom, nine international cables in the southeastern waters of Taiwan have been damaged by Typhoon Morakot since August 9, 2009, including five used by China Telecom. These cables are used for communications with the United States, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan.

Because of the damages, the access to MSN Messenger and some websites will be difficult for at least a couple more days.