Globe says internet services restored after Philippines–Singapore cable cut

Globe Telecom said on Sunday it had fully restored internet services knocked down by a subsea cable cut between the Philippines and Singapore, ending a weekend of sluggish connections for mobile and broadband customers.

“Traffic across the affected segment has been restored after the cable landing station in the Philippines successfully reactivated the system and normalized fiber connections,” the company said in a statement, The Manila Times reported. Customers who suffered intermittent connectivity or slower browsing should expect services to return to normal, and Globe said it would keep monitoring network performance.

The disruption began on Thursday night and reduced the country’s available international bandwidth, producing slower speeds and lag when accessing some international online services. Globe, PLDT and Converge rerouted traffic through alternative cables; PLDT said its services were fully normalized nationwide by 4:30pm on October 4, and Converge confirmed its traffic had been shifted to other submarine cables, Newsbytes reported. InfiniVAN, a Japanese-Filipino provider, said the affected C2C cable segment was fully restored on October 3, Astig.ph reported.

Globe warned repairs to the damaged fibre itself could still take several weeks, and said its teams were working with international partners to validate the cause. The government’s Department of Information and Communications Technology is investigating, and Secretary Henry Aguda said it was “too early to say” what caused the break — with sabotage among the scenarios under review, though not confirmed, Technobaboy reported.