SINGAPORE (AFP) - Disasters like the devastating earthquake in China have highlighted the need for countries to develop better emergency communications plans, experts say.

With indications that the number of disasters may be rising around the globe, nations need to think seriously about how to deliver communication equipment to make rescue operations quicker and more efficient, they say.

Telecommunications were interrupted for more than 30 hours in the areas hardest hit by last month's quake in China, said Wu Guoxiang of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

He told CommunicAsia, a regional trade show, that there were lessons to be drawn from some of the communications problems that developed as authorities grappled with the scope of the disaster.

The quake killed tens of thousands of people but also destroyed more than 18,000 mobile base stations and nearly 30,000 kilometres (20,000 miles) of cable and optical fibre, he said.

But when the Chinese government sent a fleet of emergency communications vehicles with satellite facilities to the quake zone, many could not reach the hardest-hit areas because of landslides and other damage.

That points to the most important lesson, he said: the capability for rapid deployment.

"Actually, a satellite communications response plan did not exist," Wu said.

When authorities then turned to helicopters to help deploy thousands of mobile satellite phones, and terminals to transmit maps and help with emergency medical care, the bandwidth could not handle the heavy traffic, Wu said.

"Satellite is the most reliable means to support disaster response, particularly major disasters," Wu, the head of ESCAP's space technology applications sector, told the trade show late Wednesday.

"It should be properly integrated as a backup to other ground-based systems, and be able to be rapidly mobilised."

Evi Koh, an adviser to the Asia-Pacific Satellite Communications Council, an industry body, said a string of disasters -- including last month's cyclone in Myanmar and the 2004 Asian tsunami -- showed national planners needed to think about how to be able to deliver communications equipment when needed.

"The important thing is preparedness," he said.

Harald Skinnemoen of Norway's AnsuR Technologies said his company was working on a project, partly funded by the European Commission, to develop rapidly deployable lightweight communications infrastructure.

He said it had also developed a system to transmit digital pictures in almost real-time from a disaster scene to an operations centre where they can be combined with input from an earth observation satellite, for example.

The photographs are zoomable over the Internet.

"It's a really powerful tool for flooding, fires," he said -- even peacekeeping in conflict zones.

"One of the problems of course with this is money," Skinnemoen acknowledged. He said it was unclear which kind of organisation would buy a system that by definition would not be for everyday use.

But he insisted that global data were pointing to an increase in geological, meteorological and chemical disasters over the past century.

"We definitely are facing bigger and bigger challenges," he said. "Now, I think, is the time to act."