Nearly half a year has passed since the repair of 5 submarine optical cables was completed.

The submarine cable lines in use in Vietnam began to have problems from the end of 2022 and sporadically until early 2023 before all 5 lines were faulty. In February 2023, the units managing the submarine cable lines expected to partially complete the repair in March, but now, nearly a month past the schedule, no line has been repaired.

According to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Vietnam, the process of repairing submarine cables is not simple. In addition to the problem of cables being located deep under the ocean floor, requiring specialized technical teams, the multinational connection also requires the repair unit to ask for permission and get the consent of the relevant countries before being able to access the location that needs to be handled. Weather is also one of the issues that affects the plan.

Internet chưa phục hồi hoàn toàn sau gần nửa năm diễn ra sự cố — The Internet has not fully recovered after nearly half a year of the incident.

For nearly half a year, the problems have not been resolved on all 5 lines and the earliest it will take is the end of April for the lines to return to normal operation. During this period, network operators have had to switch to land-based cable lines to ensure connection traffic.

The most popular land route is the one connecting China to Hong Kong. In addition, land routes through Cambodia, Thailand to Singapore are also used to share the load, ensure traffic and domestic international connections.

Vietnam's current submarine cable lines (accounting for 99% of domestic and international traffic) include AAE-1 (faulty since late November 2022), APG (December 2022), AAG (January 2023), IA (late January 2023). By February 2023, the "oldest" submarine cable line, SMW-3, had a problem, marking the first time all 5 of Vietnam's cross-sea connections had problems.

Although being the unit using traffic on the cable line, Vietnamese ISPs cannot proactively intervene or repair it because the submarine optical cable is managed, operated and owned by an alliance of many telecommunications enterprises in different countries.

Currently, domestic and international internet connections have been partially restored after the Ministry of Information and Communications directed ISPs to open more land cable capacity, share and rescue traffic with each other.

At the briefing on April 7, Minister Nguyen Manh Hung mentioned the situation of the 5 cable lines, emphasizing that the digital economic infrastructure cannot continue to be as unstable and unsustainable as it has been in the past. In the next 2 years, the Ministry aims for Vietnam to have 10 submarine fiber optic cable lines, 3 of which will be owned by domestic enterprises to avoid dependence on the alliance.

Source link