As repairs of Vietnam's two undersea internet cables complete, another encounters problems

Internet speed in Vietnam has improved as two undersea cables connecting Vietnam with the rest of the world have finally been fixed, VietnamPlus quoted a local internet service provider (ISP) as saying, but another one has faced technical glitches since the weekend.

Repairs to the infamous Asia-America Gateway (AAG), which encountered problems in early November, were completed on Saturday. Meanwhile the SEA-ME-WE 3 (SMW3) was repaired a week earlier after it encountered a power failure in October.

But also on Saturday, the Asia-Pacific Gateway (APG) encountered an unspecified problem on the section connecting Vietnam and Singapore.

The ISP has switched to other undersea cables as well as the overland China-Southeast Asia Terrain Cable System (CSC) to maintain stable connections. It is also cooperating with foreign partners to quickly identify and resolve APG's problem.

This is the second time the APG has encountered problems this year, following a rupture in June.

The APG runs for 10,400 kilometers (6,460 miles), and links Vietnam with Japan, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand.

Costing $450 million, it was launched on January 3 with speeds 20 times higher than the AAG, which has gained notoriety in Vietnam for its unreliability.

Thanks to the APG, Vietnamese service providers are relying less on the AAG, which has encountered problems five times in just this year, with incidents in January, February, August, October and November.

Vietnam currently has six submarine cable systems, as well as a 120 gigabit channel that runs overland through China.

With a download speed of 5.46 megabytes per second, Vietnam's internet speed was ranked 74th out of 189 countries and territories in a global survey of broadband speeds compiled by Cable.co.uk, a U.K. broadband, TV, phone and mobile provider, in August.

Vietnam's average broadband speed was 10 times lower than its Southeast Asian neighbor Singapore, according to the survey. However, the country still managed to trump six other countries in the region.

Nearly 49 million people in Vietnam, or more than half of the country’s population, are online.