Although no official announcement has been made, news site VietNamNet Bridge has said that Internet service providers (ISPs) have made it clear it will take at least 10 days from now to finish the repair of the broken AAG submarine cable route.
The optical cable was cut at 5pm on August 2. The incident has seriously affected the quality of internet services in Vietnam. Currently, connection to overseas websites such as Facebook and Google is very difficult.
It is likely that the cable was cut during the recent typhoon in the East Sea, however, no exact reason has been given by the Vietnamese authorities.
Vietnamese Internet service providers are still awaiting information from the AAG cable operator on the cause of the incident and the true deadline for the repair.
The cable was cut approximately 90 km from the South Lantau landing station in Hong Kong. There is no data being transmitted from the CBVTU station to Hong Kong, causing more serious impact than previous incidents.
Sources from the local Internet service providers said that it will take at least another 10 days to fix the cable.
Vietnamese internet users have suffered a number of internet outages recently. Viettel, one of the country’s ISPs, has been experiencing slow connection speeds since mid-July due to a rupture found on the Intra-Asia (IA) cable system, one of four international underwater cables Internet Vietnam is connected to.
The IA incident comes only ten days after the Asia America Gateway (AAG) cable system, also vital to Vietnam’s internet connectivity, underwent regular maintenance between June 22nd and 27th.
The IA underwater cable system was launched in late 2009, connecting Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Japan. Spanning a total length of 6,800km, the system boasts a data transfer speed of 3.84Tbps. Among the Vietnamese Internet service providers, Viettel relies on this system most heavily.
The three other major international submarine Internet cable systems Vietnam is connected to are the AAG, SMW3 (Southeast Asia -
Internet traffic in Vietnam is badly affected whenever the AAG cable ruptures, as the system has the largest capacity out of the four.
VNPT, Viettel, and FPT are participating in a trans-Asia Pacific cable system project that will connect Asia with the U.S. and is scheduled to go online sometime in 2016.
