Local telecom companies plan to move five of their base stations away from the city’s low-lying areas and are looking for alternative locations, Post and Telecommunications Bureau (CTT) Director Derby Lau Wai Meng said Thursday.
Lau made the remarks when talking to reporters on the sidelines of a press conference about an international stamp exhibition, at the Venetian.
In August last year, Super Typhoon Hato pummelled the city and caused serious flooding in low-lying areas. Many power supply facilities were either affected or badly damaged by the floods in various areas, causing massive power outages in the city. The blackout also caused a mobile phone network outage as there was no stable electricity to run the telecom companies’ base stations.
After the onslaught of Hato, Lau said that her bureau had demanded telecom companies upgrade their facilities to prevent another network outage caused by a typhoon in the future, and they had done so. According to Lau, the bureau also asked the companies to carry out various measures including upgrading their emergency power systems and moving their base stations away from low-lying areas.
During and after the assault of Super Typhoon Mangkhut over the last weekend, some telecom facilities in the low-lying areas were again affected by partial power outages but to a much lesser extent than last year.
Lau pointed out that the effect on the telecom network by Mangkhut was relatively mild, adding that the city’s network service providers had gained some experience from last year’s Hato.
She underlined that her bureau would cooperate with telecom companies in finding the best locations for the five base stations safely away from low-lying areas.
