Typhoon Hato lashed Macau on August 23th with wind speeds of up to 207 km/h, causing casualties and severe damage. Power blackouts due to flooding occurred in a wide range of the city and island areas, paralyzing almost the whole city. Power feeding the operations of the Macau telecommunications companies were affected by the floods leading to serious service interruption. Since back-up power was only designed to last for only two to three hours, the majority of landline, broadband services, television channels were also cut off. Citizens were unable to communicate with each other, look for help, nor even receive news updates. Critically, emergency services were also badly affected.

The selflessness of humanity shines through at such difficult moments caused by the typhoon. Soon after the disaster, Mr. Tony Fok, Chairman of Comba Telecom, and Mr. Zhang Yue Jun, Vice Chairman of the Board, instructed relevant departments to deliver full support to the Macau operators in the relief works, with the focus on delivering humanitarian relief overriding business issues, and giving our best to implement social responsibility. Mr. Simon Yeung, Executive Director and Senior Vice President of Comba Telecom and President of Comba Telecom Systems International Limited was appointed to lead the coordination between various units and teams to execute the relief works. Following clear instructions from Simon, three emergency teams were set up from Comba Macau to take the initiative to offer the emergency services solution to the operators and telcos. As soon as the operator responded with a request for support, Comba sent an emergency team to help the operator with general repairs and battery replacements. Telecommunications companies also replied that they will update us with the damages and conditions in a detail report later this week. Comba will keep following this up for any updates.

All business units have already got themselves ready to answer the call from the emergency teams in terms of products, technical support and manpower.