One more IA undersea cable has a problem, Vietnam’s Internet going internationally is affected again

Three undersea cable lines are simultaneously interrupting the service

Information with ICTnews on February 23, a representative of an Internet service provider (ISP) in Vietnam said that from February 18, the Lien A submarine cable route (Intra Asia – IA) had problems. According to the notice sent to ISPs by the cable management unit, the IA cable connecting to Hong Kong (China) is under maintenance to fix problems, expected to be completed by the end of February.

This is a sea cable route with a total length of 6,800 km and has been put into operation since November 2009. This undersea cable route connects Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Japan. This undersea cable route is considered as an important fiber optic route to transit traffic to the Americas and Europe for customers in Vietnam and the region.

The fact that there is an additional faulty IA undersea cable line that requires maintenance while the other two cables, Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) and Asia America Gateway (AAG), have not yet finished overcoming the problems that occurred before, making the pressure to ensure. The quality of international Internet services of the network operators is more and more burdensome.

The last time the AAG cable had a problem was on the evening of October 22, 2021. The incident caused the loss of all traffic from Vietnam to international routes on the route. At 15:00 on December 29, 2021, the fault on the cable branch connecting to Singapore in the direction of AAG has been fixed. Meanwhile, the problem occurred on the S1I cable branch connecting to Hong Kong (China) with 3 fault points that have not been fixed yet. According to the latest schedule, the time to repair errors on the S1I branch of the AAG undersea optical cable route will last from February 25 to March 13, 2022.

With APG, at the fourth incident last year, on December 5 and December 13, respectively, the APG cable had problems in two directions connecting the cable to Japan and Hong Kong (China). On January 14, 2022, the problem on the S1.5 branch of the APG cable connecting to Japan was fixed. Currently, the cable repair ship is repairing and overcoming errors on the cable branch about 125 km from the Hong Kong docking station (China) of the APG route, expected to be completed on February 24.

Talking to ICTnews, Mr. Vu The Binh, CEO of NetNam Company, Vice President and General Secretary of Vietnam Internet Association (VIA) said that if all three undersea cable lines AAG, APG and IA had problems at the same time, certainly affects the quality of Internet services in Vietnam in general. Some groups of users may experience slower access speeds than before to certain destinations on the Internet.

“Of course, ISPs will find ways to compensate for the lack of capacity through other channels, but it will certainly not be as comfortable as when the above three undersea cable lines are still in good working order,” Mr. Vu The Binh added.

Individuals and businesses should use more domestic applications

A representative of VIA also said that at present, foreign Internet traffic is much larger than domestic traffic. Therefore, whenever there is a problem with international undersea cable routes, the quality of Internet services is affected. In fact, network operators, on the one hand, have sought to invest in building new cable routes, and on the other hand, have also sought optimal ways to increase domestic Internet traffic, such as strengthening Caching and CDN systems.

We all want Vietnamese Internet users to use domestic applications, but whether that is possible or not depends on the quality and popularity of domestic applications. This is a big challenge and needs a lot of time and joint efforts to improve.

“Our suggestion is that businesses and individuals should use more domestic applications, as a supplement and backup to familiar applications provided by global companies,” a VIA representative stated. recommended.

Analyzing more about long-term solutions to cope in the context of frequent incidents of undersea cable routes that Vietnam is using, VIA’s representative emphasized: The Internet can now be considered as an important digital infrastructure. national importance to serve socio-economic development. Large network operators also have strategies and plans to expand international cable routes to catch up and meet the growing demand for Internet services.

The Vietnam Internet Association also noticed the efforts to promote the construction of domestic platforms and services such as social networks, business management platforms, meeting platforms and applications, online learning, etc. Certainly when Vietnamese platforms and applications have quality and popularity, the dependence on offshore undersea cable routes will be less.

“On the other hand, we also see global platform providers bringing infrastructure and data closer to Vietnam, setting up access points in Vietnam. This shows that both international and domestic capacity demand will increase sharply in the near future, when the economy recovers after the epidemic,” a VIA representative commented.