Submarine optic fiber cable routes AAG, APG, AAE-1 and IA have all seen problems recently. Of these, APG has totally lost connections with the two regional hubs of Singapore and Hong Kong. The disconnection has affected Vietnam and other regional countries as well.

Nguyen Hong Thang, director of the Authority of Telecommunications (AoT), said the incidents have led to the loss of connections of 75 percent of international traffic on undersea cable routes. 

Soon after the incidents occurred, MIC set up a steering committee coordinating many measures to mitigate the consequences.

AoT said in addition to using technical solutions, telecom carriers have quickly opened land connection capacity despite high costs in order to ensure international connections and users’ benefits.

VNPT and Viettel have confirmed this, saying that they are always ready to deal with incidents and have applied solutions to ensure international connections, including the expansion of more land connection capacity.

“When there is a high load, the IT systems built by Viettel itself will automatically balance load and regulate capacity on remaining submarine cable routes and land cable routes,” Viettel’s representative said.

Thang said that MIC had instructed telecom carriers to share international traffic to ease difficulties. On February 10, they began implementing the commitments of supporting each other. Viettel has shared 100Gbps of international internet connection capacity with VNPT.

According to Viettel and VNPT, on February 12 morning, customers’ usage volume was still high. VNPT’s usage capacity in rush hours was 94.95 percent, while Viette’s was 96 percent.

To settle this problem, VNPT has discussed with its partners about buying additional land cable capacity and putting it into operation in one or two weeks. Meanwhile, Viettel is negotiating on buying more land cable capacity to ensure the standby rate of 10 percent at minimum

MobiFone and FPT have taken many technical solutions to ensure international connections. The usage capacity in rush hours of MobiFone and FPT is within the safety line and the service quality is ensured. In rush hours of February 12, FPT customers’ usage capacity only accounted for 80 percent of the enterprise’s international capacity, while the figures were 73 percent for MobiFone and 88.1 percent for CMC Telecom.

To date, with many solutions applied, telecom carriers have offset 50 percent of international connection capacity and the service quality has been gradually improved.

Hai Dang