This incident occurred shortly after the maintenance of the Asia-American Gateway (AAG) submarine cable route (connecting Vietnam with Hong Kong and the US).

Viettel said this cable route was broken on June 27, coinciding with the maintenance of AAG but until July 12 it will be repaired. The broken point is 45km from the landing station in Singapore.

Specifically, this route will stop serving from July 12 to 19. During this time, the international connections will be mainly through the AAG and some on-land routes.

There are three Internet service providers in Vietnam using the pan-Asia submarine cable route, including Viettel, FPT and CMC. Viettel is the most affected. The operator said it had temporarily switched traffic from the pan-Asia cable to the AAG to maintain the quality of the connection.

This carrier will add a total of 160Gbps traffic to backup routes through China, AAG, and Hong Kong during the time of repair of the pan-Asia cable.

The remaining Internet providers mainly use the AAG and landlines so they will not be affected much by the pan-Asia incident.

The pan-Asia cable was put into operation in November 2009, connecting Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Japan, with a total length of 6,800km.

Vietnamnet.vn