After the Lunar New Year, internet speed will return to normal

At this time, all three international submarine cable lines connecting to Vietnam, including AAG, APG and IA, are having problems and have not been resolved.

Three submarine fiber optic cables were damaged at the same time, seriously affecting international Internet connections from Vietnam. Graphics: Nhu Khanh

This is the first time in Vietnam that a problem has occurred in all three international internet connections at the same time, causing internet access speed to become very slow, intermittent, and unstable.

According to network operators, the submarine cables will be repaired one by one, but it is expected that by February 7 (January 11), Vietnam's main international submarine cable, AAG, will have its problems fixed and internet speeds restored to normal.

Specifically, the APG line, which was put into use in December 2016, suffered two simultaneous incidents on December 31, 2016 (in Singapore and Chongming - China, leading to loss of traffic to Singapore). It is expected to be fixed by January 23.

The AAG line had a problem on January 8, leading to loss of traffic from Vietnam, Hong Kong, Singapore and the US. Repairs are expected to be completed on January 29.

Meanwhile, the Inter-Asia (IA) submarine cable had a problem at the branch to Hong Kong on January 10, but the power was reconfigured on the same day and it resumed operation.

However, on January 11, another power leak was discovered at the branch to Singapore. Currently, there is no announcement from the Cable Management Board about the repair schedule.

Viettel is the only company participating in exploiting the IA fiber optic cable line. “It is expected that after 2 days, Viettel customers will be able to use international services normally,” said an announcement from Viettel.

Viettel's representative also said that after the incident, the unit deployed a rescue solution, routing connections, ensuring 100% quality for services using international traffic such as 3G, channel rental, roaming, VoIP, Internet with Google content stored on a server system located in Vietnam and a part of traffic for fixed services.

In addition, Viettel also quickly increased cache traffic (data storage) for nearly 100 Facebook servers installed in Hanoi, Da Nang, and Ho Chi Minh City.

This unit also deployed a plan to add nearly 300Gbps to APG branches to Hong Kong, Japan and mainland China. Viettel also continued to find cross-connection options through other directions such as Laos and Cambodia.

Meanwhile, VNPT VinaPhone said that VNPT's Internet network still maintains three international cable directions (land cable system, SMW3 submarine cable system and part of APG submarine cable system), ensuring good maintenance of directions to Asian, European and American countries, connections with Google and Facebook.

As soon as the incident occurred with the AAG fiber optic cable on January 8, VNPT routed Internet traffic to other directions: CSC (land cable through China) and SMW3 (Asia cable to India to Europe) to ensure smooth network operation, and coordinated with international partners to arrange connection rescue capacity to fix the interruption of transmission lines to customers. VNPT VinaPhone has made a list of customers that need special priority to ensure international Internet access speed.

A representative of VNPT VinaPhone said: “We are implementing measures to maintain services, ensure smooth communication for customers, and proactively contact to inform and support customers. The expected recovery time is from January 23 to February 7.”

According to TTO