Addressing a rupture on a submarine cable. — Photo ictnews.vietnamnet.vn

Three international undersea cables out of the primary five connecting Việt Nam to the world are suffering issues, which could seriously impact connection speed and reliability.

The Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) was the latest – following Asia America Gateway (AAG) and AAE-1 (Asia-Africa-Euro 1) – to see disruptions after a problem on the S6 segment (near Hong Kong, China) was reported on Monday morning, according to an internet service provider.

This is the fourth time in 2022 the cable faced problems, after problems in April, July, and September. The September issue suffered a problem on the S9 segment (to Singapore) and was only fully repaired on November 14.

Vietnamese internet service providers have yet to receive notices from the cable management unit on the causes or the repair plans for the current issue.

The 10,400km-long APG line was first operational in December 2016.

It was invested by four Vietnamese internet service providers – VNPT, Viettel, FPT and CMC.

AAE-1 was suffering from a ‘shunt fault’ problem on the S1H segment, also near Hong Kong area, since November this year. The AAG is seeing several issues on S1B and S1B segments (near Brunei) and S1H and S1I segments (near Hong Kong).

The problems on these lines have not been fully addressed yet, making it harder for internet providers to ensure the quality of the connections to their consumers.

Only two other lines that connect Việt Nam to the world – SMW3 (SEA-ME-WE3) and Intra Asia (IA) – are running without disruptions. — VNS