VietNamNet Bridge – A special vessel has entered Vietnam’s territorial waters to fix the broken AAG cable segment from July 26 to July 30, according to the Asia-America Gateway (AAG) sea cable management centre.

The repair will be carried out from 3am on July 26 to July 30 in order to resume normal operations of the Vung Tau-Hong Kong internet cable.

Vietnamese internet service customers began experiencing disruptions and slower speeds on the evening of July 15 caused by a severed submerged internet cable just off Vung Tau’s coast.

VHost Company on July 15 quoted the Asia-America Gateway (AAG) sea cable management centre as saying that the incident had caused widespread disruption in supplying telecommunications services throughout the region, including Vietnam.

The disruption has mainly affected overall traffic between Vietnam and other parts of the world, thus slowing down communications and data transfers between users in Vietnam and the world, such as the US, Japan, Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea and Europe.

Fortunately, domestic transactions and communications have not been affected.

VHost said that it was working closely with those in charge of managing AAG to resolve the problem and will keep its customers updated.

FPT Telecom Director General Nguyen Van Khoa and CMC Telecom Deputy Director General Ngo Trong Hieu confirmed the incident and added that the sea cable was damaged approximately 18km off Vung Tau’s coast.

CMC Telecom services were not affected and the Internet provider ensured services for customers.

Meanwhile, FPT Telecom has implemented back-up and provisional plans so internet access is a bit slower than usual.

The AAG is a 20,000-kilometre long submarine communications cable system, connecting Southeast Asia with the US mainland, across the Pacific Ocean via Guam and Hawaii.

With a total investment of approximately $560 million, AAG has a length of nearly 20,000 km, starting from Malaysia (TM) and ending in the U.S. (AT & T telecom company).

The segment to Vietnam is 314 km long and lands at Vung Tau.  There are four participants in the system, including FPT Telecom, VNPT, Viettel and SPT.

The cable has encountered frequent breakages over the past five years, said Vu The Binh, Director General of Netnam.

This incident caused approximately 40% decline in capacity of international Internet bandwidth from Vietnam to Hong Kong and the United States of all operators.

This is not the first time the AAG cable network broke.. Telecom companies have continually expanded international bandwidth to increase capacity and limit the impact when the cable breaks.

On December 20, 2013 the Vung Tau-Hong Kong segment of the AAG cable broke and it was repaired on January 5, 2014.

Mai Nga