Undersea cable faults cause internet chaos in Vietnam, Cambodia & Lao PDR
By Stella-maris Ewudolu on June 2, 2020

Vietnam’s high level of digital penetration has been a saving grace during the COVID-19 lockdown, enabling home-based work, e-learning, and e-Commerce to thrive.

It has been a somewhat different situation for those using international online services though, with the two main submarine cables carrying internet traffic into and out of Vietnam suffering a series of failures that are yet to be rectified.

The effect for internet users in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Lao PDR has been slower and more erratic than normal online services, with mail and messaging services, mobile apps, social media sites, and websites experiencing a range of malfunctions and connectivity issues. Reports of Gmail refusing to open, Facebook and website pages not loading, and video conference calls or videos freezing, or just not working at all, are common.

While damage to one of the six in-service submarine cables coming out of Vietnam is not uncommon, for the two largest capacity cables to be damaged at the same time is, causing internet service providers (ISPs) to scramble to redirect traffic over the remaining four, and a 120 Gbit channel that runs overland through China.

The most recent round of problems began with the Asia-Pacific Gateway (APG) on April 20 which saw three days of disrupted service after the network manager reset its configuration. On May 23 the entire system ground to a halt due to an as yet to be identified problem.

The fault in the 10,400 kilometer (about 6,500 mile) long APG, the fourth this year, came one week after the 20,000 km (12,500 mi) fibre optic Asia America Gateway (AAG) cable suffered a breakdown on the S1H section connecting Vietnam with Hong Kong. This less than a month after repairs were completed on an earlier fault.

Carrying more than 60 per cent of Vietnam’s international internet traffic, the almost 12-year-old strife-prone AAG provides data speeds of 5.2 Tbps, while the equally trouble plagued APG has a bandwidth of 54 Tbps, the highest of any network in Asia.

An employee of the Viet Nam Posts and Telecommunications (VNPT) Group who declined to be identified as they were not authorised to make public statements, told AEC News Today that work on repairing the S1H section of the AAG had originally been expected to be completed today, June 2. However, additional problems are now expected to see repairs take until June 6 to complete.
https://aecnewstoday.com/2020/undersea- ... a-lao-pdr/

Faster speeds seen after Vietnam internet cable repaired
By Stella-maris Ewudolu on July 2, 2020

Internet users in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Lao PDR should now be experiencing faster and more stable international internet services following the completion of repairs to the Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) undersea cable.

Repairs to the S9 and S1.7 branches of the cable connecting Vietnam with Singapore and Hong Kong were finally completed earlier this week after the entire system grounded to a halt on May 23. (See: Undersea cable faults cause internet chaos in Vietnam, Cambodia & Lao PDR)

FInalised two days ahead of schedule, the 10,400 kilometer (about 6,500 ml) long APG is one of the main submarine cables linking Vietnam with its neighbours in the Asean region.

Almost coinciding with the break in the APG, the 20,000 kilometer (12,500 ml) fibre optic Asia America Gateway (AAG), which carries more than 60 per cent of Vietnam’s international internet traffic, was also damaged. The combination of the two significantly impacted internet speeds across the three countries until the AAG was repaired in the first week of June.

Similarly, repairs were recently completed on a section of the 25,000 kilometer (15,500 ml) Asia Africa Europe 1 (AAE-1) submarine cable, which suffered a malfunction on June 3 in the S1H section linking Vietnam with Hong Kong.

According to the May 2020 Speedtest report Vietnam’s internet broadband download speed increased from 47.66 Mbps in April to 52.29 Mbps, ahead of Lao PDR (34.16 Mbps), the Philippines (22.31 Mbps), Cambodia (21.83 Mbps), Indonesia (19.79 Mbps), and Myanmar (18.00 Mbps).

All, however, lag significantly behind the 205.136 Mbps recorded in Singapore or the 170.14 Mbps in Thailand, and Malaysia’s 81.08 Mbps.

As of May internet penetration in Asean was said to have averaged 68.26 per cent, with Brunei, Singapore, and Thailand having the highest internet usage rate at 95.3 per cent, 88.4 per cent, and 81.7 per cent respectively.

On June 14 VN Express reported that a new 9,400-km (6,151 ml) submarine cable with a bandwidth of 140 Tbps, more than the total of all existing cables connected to the country, is slated for completion by 2022.

Japanese tech company NEC will lay the cable for Asia Direct Cable (ADC), which will feature multiple pairs of high capacity optical fibers providing high-capacity data transmission across East and Southeast Asia, connecting Hong Kong, China, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand.
- AECnews