An Internet service provider (ISP) in Vietnam told ICTnews that problems with the Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) route have been solved. International Internet traffic towards Hong Kong (China) and Japan has resumed. Internet service interruptions caused by the incident on this route for a month. The APG cable had a problem on October 29 on the S3 segment, causing a loss of connection from Vietnam to Japan and the US.

As an international submarine fiber optic cable was put into operation in mid-December 2016, APG has a length of about 10,400 km, running underground in the Pacific Ocean. It can provide maximum bandwidth up to 54 Tbps. The route has connection points in China, Hong Kong (China), Taiwan (China), Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

APG is partly invested by Vietnamese carriers such as VNPT, Viettel, FPT Telecom, CMC Telecom.

Vietnamese enterprises use the following international submarine fiber optic cables: AAG (Asia - America Gateway), SMW3 (also known as SEA - ME - WE3), Trans-Asia (IA - Intra Asia), APG (Asia Pacific Gateway) and AAE-1 (Asia - Africa - Euro 1). The bandwidth of international Internet connection in Vietnam is mostly through submarine fiber optic cables, so if one of them breaks down, the Internet speed will be affected.

In fact, in the past three months, besides the APG, two other cables have also encountered problems, strongly affecting Internet services in Vietnam.

In the first week of September, errors were found on the AAE-1 cable, causing a loss of all Internet connection capacity from Vietnam. The error was fixed on November 25.

For the AAG cable, an incident occurred on October 22, causing the loss of all traffic from Vietnam to the world on AAG cable. The international partner has scheduled finishing the repair on December 15.

A representative from the Vietnam Internet Center (VNNIC) said that incidents related to submarine cables are considered a force majeure event, which presents a challenge for local network operators. But this is also an opportunity for them to increase investment and network optimization to prepare for the post-pandemic development phase.

Van Anh

AAG submarine cable has problems, Internet affected again

The AAG submarine cable route has encountered problems on the S1I branch from Vietnam to Hong Kong, affecting the quality of Internet services in Vietnam. Meanwhile, the errors on the AAE-1 submarine cable have not been fixed yet.