An illustration of an undersea Internet cable – PHOTO: VNA

The Asia-Pacific Gateway (APG) undersea cable network, which links Vietnam with other countries and territories in the Asia-Pacific such as Singapore, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, was down at around 6:45 a.m. on January 9.

The incident, which occurred on the network’s S3 branch, has affected the Internet traffic between Vietnam, Hong Kong and Japan and made it difficult for Vietnamese internet users to access foreign websites such as Facebook and Netflix.

Meanwhile, the Intra Asia (IA) cable, which links Vietnam with Singapore, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Japan, broke down on January 1.

Major Internet service providers such as the Viettel Group, the Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Group and FPT Telecom have swiftly re-directed international internet traffic to other cable systems to maintain international connections for Internet users in Vietnam.

IA and APG are among five international undersea Internet cables in Vietnam.

The IA cable, with a total length of 6,800 kilometers and a designed capacity of 3.84 Tbps, was put into service in 2009.

The 11,000-kilometer APG cable has a designed capacity of 15.3 Tbps and has been operational since late 2016. SGT