Last week Telekom Malaysia reported that one of its overseas submarine cable which connects Malaysia to USA, Hong Kong and other parts of the world was damaged. This may cause disruption to internet users in the country and that the operator is working with the supplier to fix the problem as soon as possible.
TM is now updating Malaysians on the current situation and maintenance work is currently under way, the consortium of operators which maintains the Asia-America Gateway (AAG) submarine cable system will be performing planned preventive maintenance works between 17 to 21 April and we can expect some disruption to services. The submarine cable system at Segment 1i, between Vung Tau (Vietnam) to Lantau, Hong Kong connecting Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Asia Pacific; including Malaysia to Hong Kong and United States of America will under go preventive maintenance work to avoid any potential future breakdown.
AAG provides international connectivity to some internet-based services such as video conferencing (e.g. Zoom), gaming that rides on Valve (e.g. Roblox & Blizzard), Virtual Private Network (VPN) and Instant Messaging (e.g. Jabber and Wechat) as well as applications hosted in Hong Kong and the U.S. This maintenance exercise may cause some degree of service degradation for internet users of these services in Malaysia and in the region. However, it notes that for other users and services, the internet experience will be largely unaffected.
To mitigate this, TM has also taken proactive steps to optimise traffic on networks to reduce congestion by diverting the traffic to alternative routes.
It is noted that during the Movement Control Order (MCO), usage for the net increased more than 30% of this, the increase of international link traffic is at 5%. Due to TM’s existing partnerships with technology giants and social networks in localising Internet content, only 20% of internet traffic has gone truly international which are mainly for streaming, online games and tele-conferencing. This has resulted in minimal impact of any cable fault or works to internet users in Malaysia.
TM assures users that the company has ample backhaul capacity that can be upgraded to cater for the spikes in data usage of the industry and mobile users.
