However, the error on the AAE-1 submarine cable route has yet to be fixed.

The error on the AAE-1 submarine route will be repaired in early November. (Illustrative image)

With a length of 20,191 km, the AAG route connects Southeast Asia with the US. This cable route has been in operation since November 2009, passing through Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Brunei, Hong Kong (China), the Philippines and the United States (Guam, Hawaii and California).

In 2021, the AAG line had problems on June 22 and July 19, which were fixed on July 12 and August 20, respectively.

However, on August 11, a new error on the S1B segment from Hong Kong to Singapore of the AAG line was detected. The incident has affected Internet speed in Vietnam since then.

The repair was delayed twice on September 22 and October 6 and until 10pm on October 10 it was fixed.

However, the error on the AAE-1 submarine route has not been fixed yet, causing Internet service disruption in Vietnam. According to ISPs, the incident will be repaired in early November.

Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE-1) is a 25,000km submarine cable from South East Asia to Europe across Egypt, connecting Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Yemen, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Greece, Italy and France.

The AAE-1 cable system is designed with 100Gbps technology, with a designed trunk capacity of more than 40 Tbps on 5 fiber pairs. It has been in operation since July 2017, with the role of improving quality towards Europe and the Middle East as well as providing additional capacity and redundancy towards the connection direction to Hong Kong (China), Singapore.

On September 4 and September 7, errors were reported on two segments of the S1H branch. The incidents disrupted Internet connection capacity from Vietnam to Singapore and Europe. This is the second time this year that the AAE-1 cable has had problems. The first occurred on May 25, which was fixed on July 12.

This is not the first time that errors have occurred on both submarine cables at the same time. However, this time the incidents happened at the beginning of the new school year, when millions of students are studying online under the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Some users complained that their operations have been seriously affected due to poor Internet speed and network quality.

The cable management unit on September 13 informed Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Vietnam that the incident would be fixed from November 2 to 14. However, according to updated information, the repair will be completed on November 6, a week earlier than the initial plan.

Van Anh

Asia-Africa-Europe 1 undersea cable runs into problems, affecting VN internet connection

The Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE-1) undersea fiber optic cable had a problem on the S1H section on September 4, affecting the internet connection from Vietnam to Singapore.