HONG KONG, December 27 -- External telecommunications services in Hong Kong, including Internet access to overseas websites, IDD calls and roaming calls have been affected by Tuesday's earthquakes in Taiwan of China, the Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) said Wednesday.

"Due to a series of earthquakes south-southeast of Kaohsiung, Taiwan at around 1226 GMT on December 26, 2006, a number of submarine cables passing over the earthquake region were damaged. According to the reports submitted to OFTA by operators, telecommunications users have been facing severe congestion in a number of external services," an OFTA spokesman said.

Because of the extent of the damage, the congestion is expected to continue for a few days. The operators are now taking emergency measures to maximize the throughput of the existing facilities and using alternative routings to pass the traffic in other directions.

"Operators of the submarine cables have also arranged urgent repairs of the damaged cables. It is expected that some of the submarine cables will take at least five days to repair. OFTA has been liaising closely with all external telecommunications service operators and monitoring the progress," the spokesman added.

He also advised the general public to minimize non-essential Internet access to overseas websites and not to repeat making non-urgent overseas calls immediately after failure on the call attempts.

Two major earthquakes struck southern Taiwan Tuesday evening, triggering fears of a destructive tsunami, but the waves did not materializes. The quakes shook buildings in Hong Kong and were also felt in southern parts of the Chinese mainland, but there were no reports of any damage.