The submarine cable will be repaired in 2 months.

Since late February, all five submarine cable lines connecting Vietnam to the international Internet have been experiencing problems. In June, all lines will be operational again.

As of May 3, the IA and SMW3 cable lines have been repaired. The AAE-1 and AAG lines will be repaired this month. The last line, APG, will be repaired in June, said Nguyen Thanh Phuc, director of the Telecommunications Authority, at a regular meeting of the Ministry of Information and Communications on May 5.

Vietnam has five international Internet fiber optic cables: IA, SMW3, AAE-1, AAG, and APG. In early December 2022, AAE-1 had a problem near Hong Kong, China. In the same month, AAG had a problem connecting Singapore and China.

By the end of 2022 and early this year, APG had problems on branches connecting China and Singapore and Japan. Then, on January 28, the IA or Inter-Asia line had a cable break near Singapore.

Finally, on February 21, the SMW3 line encountered a problem. However, this is a cable line that is almost at the end of its life cycle and has the lowest capacity. Before this time, Vietnam had lost 75% of its international Internet capacity, causing users' network experience to be interrupted, especially during peak hours.

“This is a force majeure incident that not only affects Vietnam but also all countries using these optical cable lines. After the series of incidents, telecommunications companies coordinated with members of the cable line to measure the location of the incident and fix it,” said Mr. Thanh Phuc.

The submarine cable will be repaired in 2 months.

Repairing an undersea cable can take months because it requires permission to pass through the waters of multiple countries, then hoisting the damaged cable onto a boat and splicing it together. Photo: Bloomberg .

So far, some cable lines have been slower to fix problems than expected. AAG and APG - the lines with the largest traffic - were expected to be fixed in April but have now been extended to May and June.

However, a representative of the Telecommunications Department said that up to now, international Internet connections have met users' needs, thanks to time-based regulation and additional traffic purchases on land-based fiber optic cables.

At a meeting to announce a solution to the problem in early February, the agency said telecommunications businesses were incurring high costs to buy temporary traffic on routes in the direction of Cambodia, Thailand to Singapore and through mainland China to Hong Kong Island.

In the long term, it is necessary to open more submarine optical cable lines to ensure sustainable development of digital infrastructure, Mr. Thanh Phuc added. By 2025, Vietnam is expected to have 2-4 more submarine optical cable lines than the current ones, developed by Viettel, VNPT and CMC . “We also plan to develop 4-6 new cable lines in the 2021-2030 period, in line with the information infrastructure planning,” said the Director of the Telecommunications Department.

According to Zing

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