Telecommunications businesses told VietNamNet that they had negotiated with partners to buy more capacity of land-based fiber optic cables for international connections after five undersea fiber cables had problems. 

VNPT has an additional 800Gbps land cable and it will add more capacity in the near future to improve the quality of Internet services for its customers.

A VNPT representative said that, to deal with constant problems of undersea fiber optic cable systems, from February 18, 2023, VNPT has added more international bandwidth from the mainland cable routes in the direction through Cambodia/Thailand to Singapore and through China to Hong Kong, so the quality of international Internet access of VNPT customers will be guaranteed.

According to telecom network operators in Vietnam, raising the capacity of international connections on land improves the quality of Internet services when the undersea fiber optic cable systems have problems. 

Telecom service providers buying more capacity on land-based cables will solve the problem of Vietnam's Internet quality. 

Immediately after the breakdown of five undersea fiber optic cable systems, the Ministry of Information and Communications asked telecom service providers to have a backup guarantee of about 10% to keep the quality of services.

According to the Department of Telecommunications, at 12pm on February 13, Viettel's rush hour traffic was 94.13%. At 12pm on February 26, Viettel's peak-hour traffic was 92.39% and it decreased slightly to 91.52% at 12pm on March 1.

For VNPT, its international traffic at peak hours was 95.15% on February 13, 92.33% on February 26, and 92.11% by 12am on March 1.

MobiFone has a good backup rate of international connection capacity. On February 10, the international traffic at peak hours was 80% of the total international connection capacity, 73.1% at 12 pm on February 12, 73.8% at 12 am on February 13 and 62.31% on March 1. Thus, MobiFone has a backup rate of about 38%. With that rate, customers are not affected by the breakdown of undersea fiber optic cable routes.

Like MobiFone, FPT has a fairly good provision rate so its customers are not affected much by the incidents of optical cable routes.

Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung has assigned the Department of Telecommunications to work with telecom service providers to develop a master plan on Vietnam's undersea fiber optic cable routes and speed up the construction of a number of undersea fiber optic cable routes in order to ensure the leading and mastering role of Vietnam. It is expected that by 2025, Vietnam will have at least 10 international undersea cable routes.

Thai Khang