024CE: Slow Internet Can Be Worse Than No Internet

Metro Manila Community Quarantine - Day 194

So my main source of stress at the moment is the announced maintenance of the Asia-American Gateway (AAG) that will potentially impact internet services provided by PLDT, Smart, and SkyCable. The original announcement indicated that the maintenance activity would begin tomorrow at 8AM, but now PLDT is claiming they won't start until Friday. But the fact that the maintenance involves infrastructure that is not solely Philippine in nature, I'm not sure what control PLDT has over this. Companies are reassuring everyone that there will be no service interruptions during this 5-day activity, but that's not the big fear, really. A general slowdown of internet services overall will have a significant impact on our ability to work, especially with most of us working from home and relying on consumer internet solutions to stay online.

This will mainly impact sites whose data servers are located in the US, but that can still mean disruptions for the likes of Google (including G Suite), Facebook, and Twitter. In other words, all the things we need to operate when it comes to digital marketing. I'm hoping we're just assuming the worst and maybe things won't be THAT bad. Then again, this is the Philippines and it's not like our internet service was great, to begin with. 

Hope for the best yet plan for the worst and all that, I suppose. Maybe it'll be nothing. Maybe.