The heavy snow that has hit China in recent weeks disrupted
mobile phone services in 20 provinces, China Mobile said on
Sunday.
The weather caused power failures at 28,000 base stations in the
network of the country's top wireless operator. About 169,000
employees and 78,000 vehicles had been dispatched to repair the
stations. By Sunday, workers had restored power at 17,000 base
stations, the company said.
Chairman Wang Jianzhou said the company would do everything in
its power to deal with the problem and ensure services during the
Spring Festival, which begins on Wednesday.
"Snow and rain continue, so do our mobile services. Air
temperatures go down but the service quality will not," a company
statement said.
It added the company would step up maintenance and repair of its
stations at all transport facilities to ensure unblocked services
during peak times.
It also called on local subsidiaries in Guangdong Province,
where most migrant workers were stranded, and Anhui, Hunan,
Jiangxi, Hubei, Henan and Sichuan provinces where those same
workers originally came from, to establish emergency plans.
The worst snow in five decades has killed at least 60 nationwide
and left multi-millions facing a cold, dark Lunar New Year holiday.
The cold snap could last until Feb. 9, according to the Central
Meteorological Station.
Since Jan. 29, China Mobile had added 10 yuan (about 1.4 U.S.
dollars) to the account of every mobile phone user stranded in
Guangzhou to help them contact their families. This can buy about
10 minutes of long-distance calls or 100 text messages.
Approximately 11.91 million telecom users, or 60 percent of the
total who had an interruption in communication links because of
snow damage, had their service restored as of Jan. 30, according to
the Ministry of Industry Information (MII).
The MII said on Thursday that owing to the extreme weather, more
than 16,000 mobile telecom base stations for relay lines had so far
discontinued services. In addition, 46,000 electrical wire poles
had collapsed and 9,678 kilometers of telecom links had been
destroyed.
All these events affected 19.28 million telecom users and caused
a loss of nearly 150 million yuan.
Areas with the worst breakdowns in telecom links included
Guizhou, Hunan and Jiangxi provinces.
Trains carried more than 120,000 stranded passengers out of
Guangzhou between 6:00 p.m. Saturday and 6:00 a.m. Sunday. As of
Sunday, about 1 million people were still stranded at the Guangzhou
Railway Station after snow caused a power failure in Hunan
Province, a major trunk route between Beijing and Guangzhou.
The bad weather could prevent many holiday travelers from going
home for family reunions. Across China, government officials have
tried to persuade migrant workers to stay where they are.
In Beijing, newspapers solicited ideas from the public about how
to help the migrants spend a happy holiday away from home.
Guangzhou said it would open 157 parks for free from Sunday
through Feb. 12 to migrant workers who chose to stay for the
holiday.
(Xinhua News Agency February 4, 2008)
