Proactive traffic optimisation and diversion to alternative routes to mitigate impact
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 2020 for 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 (U.S.). The consortium needs to execute this 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 any 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. For other users and services, the internet experience is largely unaffected by this cable works.
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.
TM would like to reiterate that it has a vast and diverse network connectivity worldwide that 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.
TM wishes to highlight that due to the Movement Control Order (MCO), most people are currently confined at home and this is resulting in a more than 30% increase in usage trending. Of this, the increase of international link traffic is only 5% and the TM network is still capable to serve 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% of internet traffic going truly international 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 is also committed to ensure its core network and fibre optic infrastructure are capable to support any sudden increase in bandwidth requirement for the industry to ensure that their services to the end users are not interrupted. The Company has ample backhaul capacity that can be upgraded to cater for the spikes in data usage of the 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.
