Internet outage

Last night, there was a earthquake in Taiwan.  The earthquake damaged the under sea optical fiber linking most of the Asia to North America.  As a result, I cannot access most of HK websites I visit daily.  No online news form Mingpao bothers me the most.  Although I am still connecting to the internet in the rest of the world.  I feel like I was isolated in the dark.  Communication network is vital to modern society.  The lack of reliability of the network means not only minor inconvenience for the users, but also means billions lost of money.  I can foresee a future that internet will be treated as a public utility just like power, water or telephone.  The government will step in the industry, making regulations to guarantee the service will be provided to all the people all the time.  If regulation is indeed involved, then someone has to assume the legal responsibility.  It is very likely that the duty and privilege will falls on professional engineers, just like those for other public utilities.  If we want to stay in the communication industry for the next 20 or 50 years, it is the time to make the invest to acquire a professional qualification.  When the field is still young, the requirement is often less demanding.  Once the field becomes mature, the existing stakeholder will subconsciously protect their interest when the regulation time comes.

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