Experiencing slower internet lately? You’re not alone: Several undersea cables have been cut in the wake of the recent typhoons in the region, leaving most ISPs in the country with slower connections.

Reports from several SouthEast Asian news sources have mentioned that the region’s Asia-American Gateway (AAG), TGA-Intra Asia (TGA-IA) and SEA-ME-WE3 (SMW3) cables all have suffered damages during the past weeks. AAG had been damaged as it was ruptured in two locations: 66 kilometers (41 miles) and 85 kilometers from its Hong Kong station. Meanwhile, TGA-IA cable’s damage was seen by experts at around 54 kilometers from the same island.

As such, all local ISPs and even those from other service providers in the SouthEast Asia have experienced slowdowns caused by the ruptures. Local internet service provider Cheetah Mobile who mainly services in the Rizal area has posted this message to their users, as captured by one of the redditors in r/Philippines.

To all our Cheetah Broadband subscribers: Due to the recent typhoons that hit Hong Kong, please be advised that the submarine fiber optic cable links of our international gateway were damaged. The slowdown in our Internet connection is not only being experienced by us but by all ISPs in the Philippines and this will only improve until the fiber cut is resolved. Multiple fault points have been detected and ALL our providers have initiated their repair process. Estimated repair time is dependent on the availability of submarine cable ships and weather conditions. To date, our providers have not given an exact lead time to complete the repair as they try their best to resolve the issue.

Converge has been constantly updating its subscribers with the developments on the undersea cable cuts:

Update: Just right after we published this story, PLDT has also released a statement regarding the situation:



Globe Telecom has also issued their statement regarding the incident:

Globe Telecom takes its internet routing responsibilities seriously, and over the years have invested significant amounts of capital in a variety of subsea cable systems, including the recent SEA-US system, to ensure diversity. Globe has successfully rerouted its data traffic that goes through the affected cable systems, to its other subsea cable capacity routes. In so doing, the multiple subsea cuts had no adverse impact to our enterprise clients and mobile and broadband customers. Our technical teams are closely monitoring the network to ensure voice, SMS and data services are operating at normal levels. – Yoly Crisanto, Senior Vice President for Corporate Communication, Globe Telecom

Repairs for the cables may take up mid-October, according to experts. The AAG is one of SouthEast Asia’s primary cables and connects the region to the mainland US via the Pacific Ocean via Guam, and Hawaii with a 20,000-kilometer undersea cable in which PLDT has also invested into. Several sites have offloaded IP routing into other servers to alleviate the situation.

P.S. For those asking, here’s one way to fix your slow internet due to this issue.

Sources: VN Express, ZDNET

