Maintenance and Repairs Needed for Vietnam's High-Capacity Undersea Internet Cable in Asia

The Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) cable, which connects Vietnam with the rest of Asia, has encountered two additional errors while undergoing repairs for a previous issue. An Internet service provider announced on Sunday that the repair deadline has been postponed indefinitely due to these newly discovered errors in different branches of the cable.

In December and January, the cable experienced connectivity problems with Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore, affecting its entire network. The connection issues with Singapore and Japan were resolved in March, while the repair work for the Hong Kong connection was delayed until the end of April. In June, repairs were completed for the Hong Kong branch, restoring a crucial internet link between Vietnam and Hong Kong. However, during this time, the S1.7 section of the cable, which connects with Singapore, started malfunctioning, causing data flow to decline to half of its normal capacity. While repairs were underway for the S1.7 section, two additional errors were discovered, resulting in a complete loss of internet connection between Vietnam and Singapore on the APG cable.

Despite these challenges, the impact on users is expected to be minimal. In the past, when cable breaks occurred, Vietnamese service providers found solutions such as redistributing network traffic evenly across available resources and purchasing additional bandwidth to enhance internet capacity. Vietnam currently operates five undersea cables, and the other four are functioning normally.

The APG cable, spanning 10,400 kilometers, is jointly owned by four local companies (FPT, VNPT, Viettel, and CMC) along with a group of international businesses. With a maximum bandwidth of 54 Tb per second, it boasts the highest capacity of any undersea cable in Asia.