The Asia America Gateway announced that the repair of the Vung Tau – Hong Kong Internet cable was completed at 12pm on Sunday, July 27. Internet connection from Vietnam to the world via the AAG cable, therefore, was fully restored from 12.15pm the same day, after 12 days of interruption and three days earlier than expected.

The repair started on July 26 and it was scheduled to be completed on July 30.

The submerged cable broke on July 15 off Vung Tau’s coast, causing widespread disruption in supplying telecommunications services throughout the region, including Vietnam.

The disruption mainly affected overall traffic between Vietnam and other parts of the world, thus slowing down communications and data transfers between users in Vietnam and the world, such as the US, Japan, Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea and Europe.

The AAG is a 20,000-kilometre long submarine communications cable system, connecting Southeast Asia with the US mainland, across the Pacific Ocean via Guam and Hawaii.

With a total investment of approximately $560 million, AAG has a length of nearly 20,000 km, starting from Malaysia (TM) and ending in the U.S. (AT & T telecom company).

The segment to Vietnam is 314 km long and lands at Vung Tau.  There are four participants in the system, including FPT Telecom, VNPT, Viettel and SPT.

The cable has encountered frequent breakages over the past five years.

The latest incident occurred on December 20, 2013, and the cable was repaired on January 5, 2014.

S. Tung