MCMC said it had been informed by Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) about the damage to one of the APCN2 cable segments, which connects Chongming in China and Lantau in Hong Kong (segment 3).

The APCN2 submarine cable, which connects Malaysia to Singapore, Hong Kong and the United States, is one of 14 worldwide submarine cable systems jointly owned by TM.

In a statement today, MCMC said TM had given the assurance that all necessary steps would be taken to reduce service interruptions for users.

“While the consortium maintaining the APCN2 identifies the exact location of the damage for restorative work, TM has taken swift action to disperse affected traffic flow through its other submarine cables in order to reduce the impact on users,” said MCMC.

TM had also activated additional capacity through the Cahaya Malaysia submarine cable system, which connects Malaysia’s international traffic to Japan, the commission said.

“Internet users in Malaysia have only experienced minimal interruption as there are other submarine cables available to channel internet traffic as needed,” said MCMC.

It added that global giants such as Akamai Technologies, Amazon.com, Facebook Inc, Google Inc, Microsoft MSN and other international content providers had peering connections at the Malaysia Internet Exchange (MyIX) and most of them provided cache servers on the networks of local internet service providers.

“This means that their content is accessible locally by internet users without any interruption,” it said.

MCMC said it would continue to monitor the situation to ensure that internet services to users would 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, services and even education with the implementation of online learning,” MCMC said.