Internet connection on APG submarine cable has not been fully restored due to new error

A representative of an Internet service provider (ISP) in Vietnam said that as planned, on June 29, the repair and troubleshooting of the incident that occurred in March 2023 on branch S7 of the APG international submarine cable was completed.

With the S7 branch cable repaired, at present, the international Internet connection channels from Vietnam on the two cable directions connecting to Hong Kong (China) and Japan of the APG line have been restored.

However, this ISP representative also said that although the S7 cable branch near the Da Nang landing station of the APG line has been repaired, the connection on the entire cable line has not been fully restored due to a new error on the S1.7 branch connecting to Singapore.

"Currently, the estimated capacity of the APG submarine cable has been restored to about 50%," the ISP representative added.

With the new incident on branch S1.7 connecting to Singapore of the APG submarine cable, network operators in Vietnam have not yet received information about the cause of the incident or the repair plan.

Put into operation since late 2016, the APG international submarine cable is about 10,400 km long, located under the Pacific Ocean and has connection points in China, Hong Kong (China), Taiwan (China), Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

The APG submarine cable line has the investment of network operators Viettel, VNPT, CMC Telecom, FPT Telecom and is considered a cable line that contributes to providing stable transmission with larger capacity for Internet users in Vietnam.

Consecutively at the end of December 2022 and January 2023, the APG cable line encountered problems on branches S6 connecting to Hong Kong (China) and S9 with the faulty cable location about 151 km from the SEA landing station. These two problems at that time caused the loss of all capacity on the APG cable line.

In late March and mid-April 2023, the incidents on branches S9 and S6 of this submarine cable were repaired respectively. However, traffic on the entire route has not been restored due to the discovery of a new error on branch S7. This is the segment of the APG cable that branches into Vietnam, with the landing point in Da Nang.

Also in late 2022 and early 2023, in addition to APG, four other submarine cable lines, AAG, AAE-1, IA (also known as Lien A) and SMW3, encountered problems, causing certain impacts on the quality of international Internet services provided to Vietnamese users. In the past two months of April and May, the problems on the four submarine cable lines AAG, AAE-1, SMW3 and IA have been resolved, fully restoring capacity.

To increase Vietnam's initiative, the Ministry of Information and Communications plans to increase the total number of submarine cable lines used by Vietnamese enterprises to about 10 lines by 2025, double the current number. The Ministry also plans to direct Vietnamese enterprises to build about 2 international submarine cable lines invested and owned by a group of domestic enterprises in alliance.

It is expected that by the end of this year and early 2024, two Vietnamese network operators, VNPT and Viettel, together with cable alliances, will put two more submarine cable lines, SJC2 and ADC, into operation, bringing the total number of cable lines connecting Vietnam's Internet to the world to 7. Both ADC and SJC2 lines have landing stations located in Binh Dinh.

Speaking to reporters, a representative of the Vietnam Internet Association stated that in the near future, there will be more submarine cables with more diverse connections, helping to reduce the situation where most submarine cables are unusable at the same time. This is not only related to the service business activities of network operators, but also related to the safety of Vietnam's Internet in general.

“I think that to increase the stability and safety of Vietnam's Internet, we should probably focus on several groups of solutions. In addition to the obvious investment in more submarine fiber optic cables with diverse connection directions, promoting the "entry into Vietnam" of global platforms to bring data closer to Vietnamese users as well as promoting domestic content, are options worth considering,” said a representative of the Vietnam Internet Association.

According to Vietnamnet