VietNamNet Bridge - After repeated breakdowns on the Asia America Gateway (AAG) underwater telecom cable, local internet service providers (ISPs) are planning to build new cables.

So far this year, the AAG cable has been repaired four times. The latest repair was just completed last week. These incidents severely affected internet access in Vietnam. Last year, this cable was also broken several times.

In this situation, domestic ISPs have been thinking of construction of new cables. Mr. Mai Tri Dung, Director of the International Business Center of Viettel Telecom Corporation, said that Viettel had increased the reserve capacity for 2015 in case the AAG was broken.

"Prior to 2011, each time the AAG was broken, we had to pay for the rescue capacity 2-3 times higher than the usual price, and 2-3 days later the additional capacity was available for use," he said.

To solve that problem, Viettel has strongly invested in infrastructure resources in the immediate and long-term, and it is the ISP with the largest international infrastructure in the country.

In particular, Viettel has switched the technology of the Inter-Asia cable from 10Gbps to 100Gbps, increasing the total design capacity by up to seven times (from 450Gbps to nearly 3Tbps) and reducing the cost to about 1/10.

In 2017 - 2018, Viettel will develop at least two more international cables, connecting to the major IP Hub in the world such as the US, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Its existing network on the Indochina backbone in Laos and Cambodia plays the role of a reserve network and a gateway to open more international directions on land in the future.

This corporation’s ambition is to become a big seller of transmission capacity and to turn Vietnam into an important connecting unit in Southeast Asia.

Currently, Viettel is a "wholesaler" of international IT traffic for clients in Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Brunei, and Malaysia. The list is constantly being expanded.

According to the Centre for Information and Public Relations of the Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Group (VNPT), VNPT is planning to use the Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) undersea cable in 2016 to replace the AAG.

The APG is an undersea cable linking Singapore, Malaysia via Da Nang (Vietnam) to Japan, with an expected bandwidth of 54 Tb/s (nearly 20 times over that of the AAG). The total length of this route is 10,400 km. The total investment in this cable is approximately $600 million.

In addition, VNPT is also cooperating with other partners to increase the capacity of the South-East Asia - Middle East - Western Europe 3 cable (SEA-ME-WE 3 or SMW3 and build the Asia Africa Euros 1 cable (AAE1), with a total length of 25,000 km.

This route links Vietnam and other Asian countries to Europe and Africa. This cable is expected to be put into operation in March 2017.

The representative of FPT Telecom said also ongoing investment in APG optic cables.

Na Son