However, regional fixed-line and broadband operators said it would be a while yet before lost capacity is recovered fully.

Repairs to the undersea cables ruptured by the magnitude-6.7 tremor are expected to take up to three weeks to complete, a Taiwanese telecoms official said on Thursday.

Operators have been trying to run phone and data traffic through unaffected lines.

A spokesman for StarHub, Singapore's second-largest telecommunications firm, said: "It's getting better because more traffic is being diverted to other cables right now."

Analysts said the disruption highlighted the problem that most of the region's cable networks are running in the same direction, along earthquake-prone geographic lines.

Frank Dzubeck, president of Washington DC-based telecoms consultancy Communications Networks Architects, said: "People will start to say we can't let this happen again.

"You've really got to have multiple paths. You can't lay all the cables in the same place."