After nearly half a year, the problem of broken 5 submarine optical cables has not been fixed yet.

Since the end of last year, Vietnam's submarine fiber optic cables have encountered problems and by the beginning of this year all five lines have not been repaired.

After nearly half a year, the problem of having 5 optical fibers in the 1st degree has not been resolved. — Vietnam's submarine optical cable lines have not been repaired yet.

In February this year, the submarine cable management units announced a repair schedule, expected to be partially completed last month. However, as of mid-month this month, all lines are still experiencing errors.

Explaining this issue, a representative of an internet service provider (ISP) in Vietnam said: "The process of fixing errors on these fiber optic cables is not easy for a number of reasons such as the cables being deep under the ocean floor, asking permission from countries to access the cable location, weather is also one of the issues that affect the plan,... In addition, it is not excluded that after fixing the old problem, a new error is discovered, so the completion time is delayed.

It may take until the end of this month for the line to return to normal operation. During this period, network operators have had to switch to land-based cable lines to ensure connection traffic," the representative shared.

Vietnam's current submarine cable lines (accounting for 99% of domestic to international traffic) include AAE-1 (faulty since late November 2022), APG (December 2022), AAG (January 2023), IA (late January 2023). By February 2023, the "oldest" submarine cable line, SMW-3, had a problem, marking the first time all 5 of Vietnam's cross-sea connections had problems.

All five of these submarine cables are owned and managed by alliances, including many telecommunications companies in many different countries. Therefore, Vietnamese network operators cannot take the initiative in fixing the problem.

Previously, on February 9, 2023, the Ministry of Information and Communications directed network operators to open more land-based fiber optic cable capacity, share and rescue international telecommunications and Internet traffic for each other. However, according to many users, Internet quality has not yet returned to the same level as before the incident.

At the briefing on April 7, Minister Nguyen Manh Hung mentioned the status of the five cable lines, emphasizing that the infrastructure of the digital economy cannot continue to be as unstable and unsustainable as it has been in the past. In the next two years, the Ministry aims for Vietnam to have 10 submarine fiber optic cable lines, three of which will be owned by domestic enterprises to avoid dependence on the alliance.

In the next two years, the Ministry of Information and Communications aims for Vietnam to own 10 submarine cable lines, three of which will be owned by domestic enterprises, to avoid dependence on alliances.

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