THANKFULLY the earthquake off the coast of Taiwan on 26 December did not trigger a tsunami, but the extended internet outage it has caused across much of Asia has sent shock waves through cyberspace.
The magnitude-7.1 quake, which killed two people in Taiwan, violently shifted the seabed in the Luzon Strait between Taiwan and the Philippines, severing six out of seven submarine cables used to distribute internet and phone services from North America to Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and South Korea. As a result, people across these nations have had non-existent or very slow internet access, with knock-on…
