Microsoft has confirmed officially that the Taiwan earthquake on Monday 17th, 2009, has impacted Windows Live Messenger users in China, disrupting the service. The quake early on Monday morning, approximately 6.5 in magnitude on the Richter Scale, had its epicenter 190 kilometers East-Southeast of the city of Hualien. It appears that the undersea cables of China Telecom and China Unicom that “bridge” China and Taiwan suffered damages and resulted in Internet access problems for Chinese users, the telecom operators have noted.

Microsoft posted a message on its MSN China website for Windows Live Messenger, indicating that telecommunications operators had confirmed to the company that the August 17 earthquake was responsible for damages to undersea fiber optic cables. As a direct result, Internet services in China, neighboring countries, as well as internationally were disrupted. But at the same time, the impact of the quake was not limited to the Redmond company’s instant messaging client.

“Affected by this, Windows Live Messenger users may encounter logon problems or unable to login problems. Users may experience is not working properly access your Hotmail, spaces, and other Microsoft online services,” the announcement translated with Bing Translator reads.

Microsoft noted that it was in contact with the telecommunications operators and actively working to resolve the problem. An “emergency working group was formed to actively coordinate a variety of resources, optimize network routing, best reduced owing to the epicenter of the earthquake on the impact of the user, and will communicate to you at any time with the latest developments,” MSN China added, again with the shortcomings of the Bing Translator interpretation.

Microsoft did not provide any estimates as to when affected Windows Live Messenger users in China would be able to enjoy full functionality of the IM client. The company only apologized to users that were locked out of Windows Live Messenger and additional Microsoft online services at the moment.

Windows Live Messenger 9.0 (2009) RTW is available for download here.