TAIPEI, Taiwan - A strong earthquake off Taiwan's southern coast damaged undersea cables, disrupting phone and Internet service Wednesday in much of Taiwan, China and Japan.

Repairing the cables could take three weeks, but the situation will improve daily, said Lin Jen-hung, vice general manager of Chunghwa Telecom Co., Taiwan's largest phone company.

The company also lost 60 percent of its telephone service to the U.S.

Chunghwa said 98 percent of Taiwan's communications capacity with Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong was disrupted.

Hong Kong telephone company PCCW Ltd., which also provides Internet service, said the quake cut its data capacity in half. Many Internet users were unable to access Web sites in parts of America, Taiwan and South Korea. Calls to Taiwan were not going through.

In China, Internet access was cut or had become extremely slow, said an official from China Netcom, the country's No. 2 phone company. The official, who would not give his name, said the cause was thought to be the earthquake.

Businesses in various parts of the city also said they were experiencing Internet access problems.

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No wonder my internet been slow since yesterday. Who knew an earthquake so far away can cause the internet around the world to screw up. For now you can only steadily surf net that doesn't go from the 2 severed undersea cables, such as local websites. Damn, I wish my school website would go down too.

Anyway, I'm off to chalet for 3 days, won't be around for some time...