Internet to slow through Vietnam’s holiday weekend as cable loses signals

Internet connections in Vietnam are expected to drag in turtle speed through the weekend holiday as an international submarine internet cable just lost signal near midnight on Tuesday, Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group said.

There was some disturbance affecting the Asia Pacific Gateway cable near China’s shore, the state-owned company said.

The incident would affect all service providers in Vietnam, slowing down internet speed on international websites.

Repair work would take two to three weeks, according to a source from the company. That should mean less screen time for Vietnamese throughout the the Hung Kings’ Festival on Wednesday, the Reunification Day next Monday and the International Labor Day.

Vietnam’s internet service providers are already rerouting and transfering signals to other cables.

Disrupted internet cables are unfortunately common in Vietnam. The ongoing problem is the third this year, after 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.