Vietnam’s international Internet connection affected by faults on three undersea cables

The SJC2 and AAE-1 cables recently suffered outages while repairs to the AAG system have yet to be completed, according to domestic telecom operators and international cable management units.

AAE-1, which links Vietnam with Hong Kong and Singapore, experienced an incident at 6:22 pm on Tuesday.

Repair work is expected to begin in late September, depending on the availability of specialized vessels and weather conditions at sea.

With AAG still under repair following an earlier fault, three of Vietnam’s major international undersea cable systems are now affected.

According to preliminary estimates from several telecom operators, the outages have reduced Vietnam’s total international Internet capacity by about 30 percent.

Internet service providers have activated contingency measures, rerouting traffic through unaffected submarine cables and terrestrial networks.

Vietnam’s telecommunications provider VNPT said it had balanced and redirected traffic across alternative routes to optimize available capacity, helping keep its network generally stable.

However, users may experience slower speeds and higher latency during peak hours when accessing overseas-hosted services, including websites, high-definition video streaming, and online games.

Some operators said the impact on customers remained limited thanks to backup capacity across multiple independent routes.

Vietnam currently relies mainly on six undersea cable systems for international Internet connectivity: AAG, IA, AAE-1, APG, ADC, and SJC2.

SJC2 spans about 10,500 kilometers across the Asia-Pacific region, with an initial investment of US$439 million and a designed capacity of up to 126 Tbps.