KUALA LUMPUR: Telekom Malaysia (TM) today announced that maintenance works are being carried out on the Asia-America Gateway (AAG) submarine cable system by its consortium of operators from today until April 21.
They involve works on Segment 1i, between Vung Tau (Vietnam) to Lantau, Hong Kong connecting Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Asia Pacific, including Malaysia to Hong Kong and the United States (US).
“This maintenance exercise may cause some degree of service degradation for internet users of these services in Malaysia and in the region. For other users and services, the internet experience is largely unaffected by this (exercise).
“To mitigate this, ahead of the maintenance exercise, TM has taken proactive steps to optimise traffic on our networks to reduce congestion by diverting the traffic to alternative routes and other actions to minimise the impact to our users,” it said in a statement today.
TM reiterated that it has vast and diverse network connectivity worldwide, which is sufficient to continuously support any sudden spike in demand for internet bandwidth.
“This has enabled us to ensure the functioning of our network infrastructure, having it always-on and available to customers to ensure seamless and uninterrupted connectivity.”
There has been a 30 per cent increase in internet usage in Malaysia as most people are currently confined at home during the Movement Control Order (MCO) period, it said.
“Of this, the increase of international link traffic is only 5 per cent and the TM network is still capable of serving popular apps or content with acceptable user experience.
“Meanwhile, TM’s existing partnerships with the world’s technology giants and social networks in localising internet content has resulted in only 20 per cent of internet traffic going truly international mainly for streaming, online games and tele-conferencing.”
This, it said, resulted in minimal impact from cable fault or maintenance works to internet users in Malaysia.
“TM is also committed to ensuring its core network and fibre optic infrastructure are capable of supporting any sudden increase in bandwidth requirement for industries to ensure that their services to end users are not interrupted.”
It has also assured consumers that it has ample backhaul capacity that could be upgraded to cater for the spikes in data usage for industry and mobile users.
“In the meantime, the support team is readily available and, as always, customers can reach out to TM for enquiries and assistance via its multiple customer service channels.
“TM will continually monitor for developments on the ongoing situation and adapt its services to help customers, whenever needed.”
AAG provides international connectivity to some internet-based services such as video conferencing (like Zoom), gaming that rides on Valve (including Roblox & Blizzard), Virtual Private Network (VPN) and Instant Messaging (like Jabber and WeChat) as well as any applications hosted in Hong Kong and the US.