WHILE the Malaysia Shipowners’ Association (MASA) chairman Datuk Abdul Hak Md Amin says there are four Malaysian flagged and certified submarine cable repair vessels currently available for use by the industry, tech companies that own the undersea cables beg to differ. “There are no Malaysian flagged vessels that can undertake repairs of undersea cables according to the best practices recommended by the ICPC (International Cable Protection Committee),” says Chiew Kok Hin, chairman of the Malaysia Internet Exchange (MyIX). MyIX is an integrator between local and international internet service providers. Submarine cables are crucial as 95% of the world’s voice and data traffic rely on them to be transmitted. These undersea cables, meanwhile, are invariably linked to foreign companies such as Alibaba, Hitachi, NTT, Microsoft, IBM and Bridge Data Centres, among others.