Have You Been Experiencing Slow Internet Recently? This Could Be The Reason Why
The recent typhoons around Hong Kong have caused some serious damage to several undersea cables.
By John Lim — 05 Sep 2017, 01:10 PM
The strong typhoons that hit Hong Kong and Macau have damaged four undersea cables
Typhoon Hato hit Macau on August 23, killing 10 people and injuring 244. Flights were delayed while power and water supplies to casinos were cut off. In Hong Kong, economic losses were estimated to be as high as HK$8 billion.
These submarine cables (ASE, AAG, TGA-IA, SMW3) connect Southeast Asia to the United States
These damaged cables might cause slower Internet, especially when connecting to international websites in the US.
Submarine cables are difficult to fix as well, because repair work is dependent on ship availability, weather conditions and permits.
TM has confirmed over social media that Malaysians are affected by the outage
One of the damaged cables, ASE, is a 7,200km submarine cable that's jointly owned by a consortium run by TM, Singapore's Starhub, Japan's NTT, and the Philippines's PLDT.
PLDT has made an official announcement on its Facebook page on the possible Internet slowdown.
However, the company assured that the issue will not cause much of a speed degradation to its users
"We are not seeing any significant capacity degradation as we have sufficient network capacity to cater to current demand," the company told The Star Online.
To minimise impact, TM will be diverting some traffic through different routes so that customers will continue to get uninterrupted Internet experience. Repair works have also started.