Undersea Cable Between the Philippines and Singapore Is Down. Why It Broke and When It Will Be Fixed

If your video call home kept freezing on Friday night, or your family in the Philippines says their internet crawls, an undersea cable is to blame.

A submarine cable link between the Philippines and Singapore went down on Friday 2 October at about 9.30pm, along with a link to Hong Kong. Internet in the Philippines turned slow and patchy as the country lost part of its international bandwidth. Telcos have rerouted most traffic, but the cable itself will take weeks to repair.

What happened

Undersea fibre cables carry almost all internet traffic between countries. On Friday night, segments of the cable connecting the Philippines to Singapore and to Hong Kong went offline.

PLDT confirmed it lost about 300 gigabits per second of capacity. Converge, Globe, the provincial ISP PADECO and the University of the Philippines Diliman network all issued advisories about slow or intermittent service.

The hit lands on traffic going in and out of the Philippines: overseas websites, cloud apps, streaming, gaming and video calls abroad. Services hosted inside the Philippines kept working.

Why the cable went down

No one knows yet. The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) is investigating.

DICT Secretary Henry Aguda said it is "too early to say." The causes on the table:

• A fibre cut from natural causes on the seabed
• Equipment failure along the line
• Sabotage, which DICT says it is looking at but has not confirmed

As of Saturday, neither DICT nor the telcos had named the cable system involved or the exact location of the damage.

When will it be fixed?

Not this week. Globe warned subscribers that repairs to the undersea fibre could take several weeks. No telco or government agency has given a firm date.

Undersea repairs take time for a simple reason. A specialist cable ship has to sail to the fault, lift the damaged section from the seabed, splice in new fibre and lower it back. The schedule depends on where the break is and when a repair vessel is free.

In the meantime, the telcos have moved traffic onto other cables:

• PLDT says it has rerouted most affected traffic and has enough backup capacity to cover the loss.
• Converge says it shifted internet and data traffic to other submarine cables.
• Globe says its teams are working to ease congestion and restore normal service.

Expect better speeds as rerouting settles, but evening slowdowns can continue until the cable is back.

What this means for Filipinos in Singapore

Singapore sits on dozens of submarine cables, so your connection here should be fine. The slowdown sits on the Philippine side. You will notice it when you connect with home:

• Video calls to family may freeze, drop or go pixelated, especially at night when everyone back home is online.
• Philippine websites and apps your family uses from the province may load slowly.
• Uploads from home, like photos and videos sent to you, may take longer.

Tips while the cable is down

• Switch to a voice call when video keeps freezing. Audio needs far less bandwidth.
• Call earlier in the day. Evenings in the Philippines are the busiest hours.
• Send messages and voice notes instead of live calls for anything that can wait.
• Ask family to turn off video autoplay and HD streaming if their connection struggles during your calls.

We will update this article when DICT names a cause or the telcos confirm a repair date.