PLDT assures public of continued connectivity despite 5-day emergency maintenance of cable system

PLDT Inc. on Thursday assured its customers that its services will continue despite the conduct of a five-day emergency maintenance of one of its international cable systems.

In an advisory, the Pangilinan-led telco said the operator of the international trans-Pacific submarine cable system Asia-America Gateway (AAG) informed the company that emergency maintenance activities will be conducted on AAG submarine cables in the waters of Hong Kong SAR.

The maintenance activity will begin Friday, September 25, 2020 at 8 a.m. until Wednesday, September 30, 2020 at 5 a.m. 

“We wish to assure our customers of continued connectivity, as we have alternative cable systems to keep our services going during this maintenance period of AAG,” PLDT said.

The telco noted it has been investing substantially in expanding and boosting the capacity of existing and new international submarine cable systems such as the Jupiter Cable and the Asia Direct Cable systems, to provide redundancy to ensure continuous service in situations like this.

“Such investments are vital because bulk of internet content used by Filipinos comes from overseas,” it said.

“PLDT assures its customers that measures, such as traffic rerouting and local caching, are already in place to minimize this activity's impact, and to ensure that communication and internet services remain available to PLDT and Smart subscribers,” it added.

PLDT said the measures will allow the company and its mobile unit Smart to “fully serve, during this time, all customers at full capacity by using the spare and additional capacities on all other cable systems that support PLDT and Smart’s operations.”

However, it said that should there be internet traffic spike beyond the traffic of the past weeks, some slowing down in the busiest hours for traffic going to Asia may be experienced.

PLDT noted that “no service will be denied, and internet traffic within the Philippines and to the US will not be impacted.”

“We shall provide regular updates as the operation progresses. We thank you for your understanding,” it said. — RSJ, GMA News