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Telekom Malaysia Berhad wishes to announce that our consortium members have detected a fault on the Asia-America Gateway (AAG) submarine cable in Hong Kong segment linking Malaysia to the United States and North Asia.

TM has immediately taken pro-active steps by optimising our networks to reduce congestion and diverting traffic to alternative routes, thus, minimising the impact to our users.

Restoration works for submarine cable faults involves the concerted efforts of all consortium members, and is expected to begin on Wednesday, 1 October 2014 and completed on Monday, 6 October 2014. However, we wish to highlight that these restoration works will be subject to sea conditions, the identification of the actual location of the fault and the challenges presented working at great sea depths and pressure.

During this period, Internet users may experience some degree of service degradation such as slow browsing and high latency while accessing international websites mainly hosted in the United States (US), North Asia and Europe. Customers using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and other critical business applications linked to US, North Asia and Europe may also experience some level of service degradation.

TM shall provide necessary updates on the progress of the restoration works, and will monitor feedback from our customers on the quality of service experienced.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused and would like to assure customers that we are undertaking all necessary measures to ensure that customers continue to experience uninterrupted service.

The AAG is a 20,000-km, high-bandwidth fiber optic submarine cable system that will connect Southeast Asia to the United States. It will provide connectivity between Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei Darussalam, Vietnam, Hong Kong SAR, Philippines, Guam, Hawaii and the US West Coast and seamless interconnection with other major cable systems connecting Europe, Australia, other parts of Asia and Africa and will utilize the field-proven Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology to provide upgradeable, future-proof transmission facilities for telecommunications traffic.

Bonus :

If you have been experiencing exceptionally slow Internet speeds, even when connected to Unifi, you’re not alone. A fault on the Asia America Gateway (AAG) submarine cable system is causing data degradation, affecting Internet users in the Southeast Asian region accessing sites based in the US.

The faulty AAG cable also means that virtually all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Malaysia will face a similar issue – though Telekom Malaysia is the only ISP to have confirmed the issue. Users on Streamyx and Unifi have and will continue to experience occasional packet loss and high pings when accessing US-based servers, resulting in exceptionally slow loading times for sites like Facebook, Twitter and other sites with US-based servers. Even messaging apps like WhatsApp will see some slowdown in sending and receiving messages.

#TMAlerts 1/2 we are experiencing some degradation of data traffic to and from the US due to a fault on the AAG submarine cable system.

— TMConnects (@TMConnects) September 17, 2014

#TMAlerts 2/2 repairs are underway to repair a fault on the AAG submarine cable system. We will share updates as they become available.

— TMConnects (@TMConnects) September 17, 2014

In its update on the matter, TM has revealed that repairs are underway to fix the cable, though there is no estimated time of completion; this is a 20,000km cable we’re talking about. The fault appears to be located in the cable connecting Vung Tau (a coastal city in southern Vietnam) and Hong Kong, where the incident was recorded to take place at about 11:41pm on Monday (September 15). Worse still is the fact that repairs will take longer than usual, as Hong Kong is currently facing Typhoon Kalmaegi.

As we mentioned earlier, this issue is a widespread one, and is not just limited to Unifi or Streamyx users. There is nothing much we can do currently, but to be patient until the cable is fully restored.