A section of the Asia-America Gateway (AAG) submarine cable that connects international Internet traffic between Ho Chi Minh City and Hong Kong (China), was discovered to be cut at 5:17 am on April 23.

The cable disruption has slowed down online transactions and information exchange services between Vietnam and foreign countries but has hardly affected domestic activities.

The Vietnam Post and Telecom Group (VNPT) said after the incident it launched intensive measures to return the cable to its normal functions as quickly as possible.

To mitigate negative impacts and maintain connection services for customers, Vietttel has provided more internet capacity through utilising the Inter-Asia submarine cable and two mainland cables. FPT Telecom Company, a member of the FPT Corporation, has followed with its timely switch to mainland cables.

Internet connectivity in Vietnam is provided by four marine cables, the 20,000-kilometre AAG has the largest capacity of which at two terabytes per second.

The cable system, put into operation in November 2009, connects South-East Asia with the US mainland across the Pacific Ocean via Guam and Hawaii .

Throughout 2014 and in January 2015, it was disrupted on five separate occasions.-VNA