Internet speed in Vietnam restored as repair takes shorter than expected

A signal loss problem with an international submarine internet cable has been fixed in less than two days, much shorter than previous anticipations that it would take at least two weeks, a telecom firm said.

The Asia Pacific Gateway cable’s signal loss issue was resolved at 5:10 p.m. on Wednesday, thanks to favorable weather conditions and the fact that the problem was not as severe as previously thought, the state-owned Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group said.

International connections in Vietnam have been restored to normal speed, it said.

The signal loss, reported near midnight on Tuesday, was due to an unknown change to the cable’s default properties.

Disrupted internet cables are unfortunately common in Vietnam. The ongoing problem is the third this year, after similar incidents in February and January.

The Asia Pacific Gateway is currently the submarine internet cable carrying the largest amount of data flowing through Asia. The cable spans 10,400 kilometers, crossing China, Hongkong, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

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

More than 50 million people in Vietnam, or over half of the country’s population, are online.

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, last August.

Vietnam’s average broadband speed was 10 times lower than its Southeast Asian neighbor Singapore, according to the survey.