According to IT News, Typhoons Hato (locally named Isang) and Pakhar (named Jolina in the country) cut a number of subsea links between the Philippines and Hong Kong.
SEE ALSO: Globe vs PLDT vs Converge ICT: Our experience so far
One of the affected submarine cables is the SEA-ME-WE3 cable, which links Asia, the Middle East, and Europe and is considered the longest cable system in the world. It was installed by France Telecom and China Telecom in the ’90s and was opened in 2000.
READ ALSO: PLDT vs Globe vs Converge ICT: Fiber internet plans available
Repairs are underway, but they are expected to be completed on October 13, 2017. That’s still more than a month away from now. And who knows if that will be moved further; the date’s tentative, you see. After all, everything depends on the availability of submarine cable ships, international permits, and weather conditions, as local provider Converge ICT Solutions posted on its Facebook page.
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In the meantime, internet-service providers are forced to route Asian traffic via the United States, hence the crawling internet connection you’re experiencing for the past week or so.
As for Converge ICT, it says:
Converge ICT statement
“To minimize adverse effects on our network, we have been working on activating additional capacity. We have already added 10Gbps of bandwidth since last week. Earlier this morning, an additional link of the same capacity has been activated. With this, you can expect significant improvements in your internet connection. By next week, we are expecting to activate another 10Gbps of capacity so that your service will finally return to normal.”
PLDT, on the other hand, posted this advisory on Facebook:
We reached out to Globe Telecom to get their statement on the recent incident. We will update this article as soon as we get it.
It seems that Globe Telecom subscribers have not been affected. Yoly Crisanto, the company’s senior vice president for corporate communication, sent us this statement:
Globe Telecom statement
“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.”
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