Vietnamese users can connect the internet with other countries at a normal speed after the Asia-America Gateway (AAG) undersea cable will be fully repaired on January 9, 2014. Photo dantri.com.vn

HA NOI (Biz Hub) — The Asia-America Gateway (AAG) undersea cable providing Internet access to Viet Nam and other countries will be fully repaired on January 9, 2014.

This update was released by Nguyen Van Khoa, general director of FPT Telecom Company, adding that a cable-welding ship will enter the waters where the cable cut-out lies on January 1.

However, he noted that the speed of repairs depended on weather conditions in the region.

Echoing this opinion, Lam Quoc Cuong, director of Viet Nam Telecom International (VTI) under the Viet Nam Posts and Telecommunications Corporation (VNPT), told the Vnexpress online newspaper that the necessary preparation procedures were complete.

"The ship is expected to arrive on December 31 and will finish preparations before January 9, 2014," he stated. According to Cuong, backup cable lines had helped ensure the continued speed of Internet access, but the capacity was not as high as usual.

The cut section of the cable was found 278 kilometres off the coast of Vung Tau central city on December 20. Over the past 10 days, local Internet service providers have put a great deal of effort into transferring Internet capacity to other lines, limiting the damage seen by customers.

Khoa claimed that FPT Telecom had paid three to four times more than the normal price for extra capacity through ground cables to help users connect to international Internet servers faster.

Earlier, Nguyen Hong Hai, deputy director of the Vietnam Datacommunication Company (VDC), said they had stored 60 per cent of the affected capacity. — VNS