Internet slowdown due to damaged undersea cables

Strong typhoons around Hong Kong have damaged four main cables connecting South East Asia to the United States of America.

This has affected the internet speed in Malaysia.

The ravaged cables – ASE (Asia Submarine-cable Express), Asia-American Gateway (AAG), TGA-Intra Asia (TGA-IA), and SEA-ME-WE3 (SMW3) – will approximately take six weeks to be fixed.

Submarine cables are difficult to fix since the repair work is highly dependent on the ship’s availability, weather conditions and permits.

ASE is a 7200 km submarine cable owned by Telekom Malaysia, Singapore’s Starhub, Japan’s NTT and the Phillippines’ PLDT.

Telekom Malaysia is also part of the consortium that owns AAG.

A local media reported that telco companies were not reachable due to the public holiday but Telekom Malaysia tweeted that is was aware of the problem and is working on fixing it.

Meanwhile, according to a tweet by PLDT, users may experience slowdown, especially during peak hours, but the traffic has been rerouted to lessen the impact.