Undersea cable glitch causes minimal internet slowdown: MODA

Taipei, Oct. 19 (CNA) A power issue that occurred Saturday on the Asia-Pacific Gateway (APG) undersea cable has caused some connection delays on certain foreign websites but has not affected internet use in general, Taiwan's Ministry of Digital Affairs (MODA) said Sunday.

The ministry said that the disruption occurred Saturday on the S3 section of the APG cable, around 66 kilometers off Shanghai City in eastern China. The fault was linked to an abnormal power supply and did not involve the cable's Taiwan landing point, MODA said.

However, some users of Chunghwa Telecom's HiNet service may experience slight delays when connecting to websites in China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore during peak hours, the ministry said.

Major online services such as Google, YouTube, Facebook, Netflix, Telegram, and AWS, which rely on local caches or direct connections in Taiwan, remain unaffected, MODA said.

The affected cable has already been rerouted to improve communication and internet access, MODA said, adding that Chunghwa Telecom was working with the APG cable consortium to fix the problem.

On Sunday, Chunghwa Telecom said in a separate statement that emergency rerouting had been completed, and general connections to Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore had stabilized outside of peak hours.

Repair work is still being carried out, Chunghwa Telecom said, adding that it could not yet give a completion date.