The wild weather that has rocked South East Asia over the past week has knocked out sub-sea data cables between Australia and Asia, leading to increased latency for some local telco customers with services hosted in Asia.
Over the past week, Hong Kong and the surrounding areas were hit in quick succession by Typhoon Hato and Severe Tropical Storm Pakhar. According to the South China Morning Post, the area could see yet another tropical cyclone system within the next week.
The twin storms that have already hit the region not only resulted in casualties, injuries and property damage, they also appear to have contributed to the severing of sub-sea data links between Australia and China.
According to advisories from iiNet and Internode – both of which are owned by TPG – a number of sub-sea links between Sydney and Hong Kong have been severed due to severe weather in Hong Kong.
It is understood that at least two cables have been affected, the Sydney to Hong Kong link, as well as submarine cable, SEA-ME-WE3, which runs between Perth and Singapore.
The telcos told customers that they have temporarily routed traffic via the United States and redirected peering while the issue is ongoing.
The break occurred roughly 54 kilometres off the coast of Hong Kong, according to the companies, which have warned local network users of potential latency issues arising from the severed cables and the redirect.
“Some customers may notice slower than expected speeds, latency and packet-loss to international destinations in Asia,” the telcos said. “This may result in webpages taking longer to load, as well as impact to time-sensitive activities such as online gaming.
“Our network partner is currently engaged with submarine teams for initiation of repair process,” the advisories stated.
It is understood that the issues are expected to continue for several weeks.
