TM: Some online services may be affected for 5 days due to submarine cable works

[ UPDATE 21/04/2020 14:30 ]: Maintenance works on the AAG submarine cable has been completed. More details here.

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Telekom Malaysia (TM) has announced that some customers may experience some degree of degradation of service but this time it isn’t due to the APCN2 submarine cable. This time, the Asia-America Gateway (AAG) submarine cable will be undergoing planned preventive maintenance works for 5 days which will affect services that are hosted in Hong Kong and in the US.

According to the consortium that manages the submarine cable, the maintenance works will take place starting today, 17th April until 21st April at Segment 1i, between Vung Tau in Vietnam to Lantau in Hong Kong. This undersea cable connects ISPs in Asia Pacific including Malaysia to Hong Kong and the US. The maintenance works are necessary to prevent a potential breakdown in the future.

TM shared that the maintenance works may affect some internet-based services such as video conferencing (Zoom), online gaming that rides on Valve (e.g. Roblox & Blizzard), Virtual Private Network (VPN) and instant messaging apps (Jabber and WeChat) that are hosted in both Hong Kong and the US. The broadband provider shared that service degradation not only affects users in Malaysia but also in the region as well.

Similar to the steps taken during the recent undersea cable fault, TM has optimised its traffic on their network and to reduce congestion by diverting traffic through other routes to minimise the impact to its users. The company is confident that they have the capacity to handle sudden spikes in internet bandwidth as they have vast and diverse network connectivity worldwide.

As reported earlier, internet usage has increased by 30% during the movement control order but they have recorded only an increase of 5% for international traffic. With localisation of content by technology giants, TM says only 20% of internet traffic is going international which are mostly for streaming, online gaming and teleconferencing.

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