The system, which has been put into use since late 2009, accounts for the majority of Vietnam’s international Internet traffic. Connections to international Internet services provided by Facebook and Youtube will be slow from on March 3 as the Asia-America Gateway (AAG) undersea cable line is suspended for repair.

Pham Dinh Truong, general director of Viettel Network Corporation, said the AAG has a power leak on the S1B section connected to Singapore. The repair will be conducted until Sunday and the system will return to normal from March 9.

To deal with the disruption of the AAG, domestic Internet service providers will have to switch to backup cable systems to partly secure the Internet speed for their customers. Therefore, access to international Internet services provided by Facebook, Youtube and Viber would be slow but services by local firms such as Zalo would not be affected.

FPT Telecom said Internet traffic via the AAG has been choppy since the Lunar New Year holiday (Tet) due to a problem with the section from Vietnam to Singapore. As the undersea cable line has been disrupted many times, the firm has prepared plans to switch to other undersea cable systems.

Viettel and VNPT have contingency plans to ensure international Internet traffic for their services in the coming days when AAG is down for repair.

Because of the initiative in preparing backup capacity for the international transmission line, the problem can be solved without causing any bad experiences to subsicribers who are using Viettel internet service in Vietnam, even in rush hours.