New problem for Vietnam undersea internet cable

The Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) internet cable that connects Vietnam with the rest of Asia has encountered a new technical problem while old issues remain unfixed.

An internet service provider representative said the problem occurred 206 km offshore from Da Nang, but gave no information on a repair schedule.

In late December 2022 and mid-January this year, the cable had an issue with its connection to Hong Kong and another cable 151 km offshore. The two errors affected the entire line.

A problem with the connection to Singapore and Japan was fixed at the end of March, while the repair of the Hong Kong connection has been delayed until the end of April.

Vietnam has five undersea fiber optic cables in operation, and all five are simultaneously having problems.

The Asia Africa Europe 1 has failed since last November, which caused the loss of all international connection capacity from Vietnam to Hong Kong. It is expected to be fixed from May 2-17.

The Asia America Gateway (AAG) line also had problems in December and January. Two AAG branches will be fixed in early May, while another two branches are not on the repair schedule.

Branch IA failed at the end of January and will be restored in April, while another line had a small error in February, also yet to be fixed.

The internet service provider representative said that the cable repair process faced many challenges, including getting permission from other countries to access the cable location.

The lines are owned and managed by consortiums consisting of telecommunications businesses in various countries. This makes it difficult for Vietnamese carriers to be proactive in repairs.

On February 9, the Ministry of Information and Communications directed internet operators to increase network capacity on land and share and support each other in international telecommunications and internet service traffic. The situation improved but many users say the internet quality is still poor.

The ministry has set a target for Vietnam to have 10 undersea cable lines in the next two years, of which three will be owned by domestic enterprises.

The APG, with a length of 10,400 km under the Pacific Ocean, is the cable with the largest bandwidth connecting to Vietnam. It provides a maximum bandwidth of 54 terabytes per second and opened in 2016.

By Diep Anh – VnEXpress.net – April 22, 2023