KUALA LUMPUR: Internet users in Malaysia have been experiencing minor internet disruption resulting from damage to the Asia Pacific Cable Network 2 (APCN2) submarine cable owned by Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM).
The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) today said that TM has given its assurance that all necessary steps are being taken to reduce the impact of service interruption to users.
MCMC said it was informed by TM that one of its APCN2 submarine cable segments, which connects Chongming, China and Lantau, Hong Kong (segment 3) is damaged.
“While the consortium maintaining the APCN2 identifies the exact location of the damage for restorative work, TM has taken swift action of dispersing affected traffic flow through their other submarine cables in order to reduce the impact on users.
“TM has also activated additional capacity through the Cahaya Malaysia submarine cable system, which connects Malaysia’s international traffic to Japan. Internet users in Malaysia have only experienced minimal interruption, as there are other submarine cables available to channel internet traffic as needed,” MCMC said in a statement today.
The APCN2 submarine cable, which connects Malaysia to Singapore, Hong Kong and the United States, is one of 14 submarine cable systems worldwide jointly owned by TM.
MCMC said additionally, global giants such as Akamai Technologies, Amazon.com, Facebook Inc., Google Inc., Microsoft MSN, and other international content providers have peering connections at the Malaysia Internet Exchange (MyIX).
“Most of them provide cache servers at local internet service providers' networks. This means that their content is accessible locally by internet users without any interruption.”
MCMC said it will continue to monitor the situation to ensure that internet services to users will not be severely interrupted, especially during the Movement Control Order (MCO) period.
“The community’s dependence on broadband services at this time is crucial, especially for sectors such as commerce, service and even education, where online learning has been implemented,” it added.