Repairs to the broken Asia America Gateway (AAG) cable will be completed on October 1, 5 days ahead of schedule thanks to “mild weather,” reports Thanh Nien.
FPT Telecom general director, Nguyen Van Khoa, had said that repairs would not be completed until October 6.
Efforts to mend the broken cable were initially hampered by Typhoon Kalmaegi which was sweeping across the East Sea on the morning of September 16 when the break occurred.
Vietnamese Internet service providers, FPT Telecom, VNPT, Viettel and SPT said that they were using backup cables to mitigate the effects of the break. However, access to international websites has been significantly slower than usual since the rupture.
Khoa faulted the poor design quality of the cable for its frequent breaks:
“I must say that the AAG cable system was built to a below-standard technical design, which is the major reason behind its frequent fractures,” he told Tuoi Tre earlier this week.
The $560 million system is a joint venture among 19 partners, including Vietnam’s Viettel, VNPT, FPT, and STP and had suffered 3 major service interruptions since 2009.
