Three undersea Internet cables to be repaired from March

Representatives of Vietnam’s Internet service providers on Tuesday said the NOC (Network Operation Center) system of international undersea cables announced that three undersea cables: the APG (Asia Pacific Gateway), the AAG (Asia, America Gateway) and the IA (Intra Asia) are expected to undergo reparation in either mid-March or early April, the Vietnam News Agency reported.

The APG would see two segments being prepared, one from March 22 to March 27, and the other from April 5 to April 9. The AAG would be repaired from March 30 to April 4. The IA meanwhile is expected to be repaired in mid-March.

Reparation schedule for the AAE-1 cable (Asia-Africa-Euro 1) has yet to be announced.

Vietnam is currently connected with seven undersea cables: SMW3, AAG, IA, APG, AAE-1, SJC2 and ADC. The SJC2 and the ADC are yet to be officially operational, while the SMW3 cable is outdated and about to be decommissioned. It means Vietnam has five active undersea cables that connect it to the outside world, and four of them are currently malfunctioned.

The fact that Vietnam currently only has one fully functional undersea cable has caused internet speeds between Vietnam and the rest of the world to slow to a crawl, with many users reporting problems when it comes to video streaming and accessing online services, among other issues.

Last week, service providers said they were working with units managing the undersea cables to resolve the issues, as well as deploying other measures to optimize data transference.