Vietnam’s undersea fiber optic cable breaks twice, days apart

Vietnam’s internet connection via the Asia America Gateway (AAG) undersea fiber optic cable broke down two days after being repaired. A Vietnamese network service provider representative reported that a fault was detected at the SH1 branch of the Asia America Gateway (AAG) undersea optical around 107 kilometers off beach town Vung Tau in southern Vietnam. Connected in November 2009, the AAG handles more than 60 percent of the country’s international Internet traffic connecting Southeast Asia with the U.S., passing through Brunei, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The problem may affect about 15 percent of the total connection capacity from Vietnam to international destinations. Many domestic providers still rely on the AAG cable for their international Internet connection traffic, while the issue would affect users of 3G, 4G networks along with international social network users. On June 22, the AAG encountered a problem on the S1H branch, which took until July 17 to be fixed as new errors were found during the repair process.