Hanoi (VNA)ꦆ – Vietnam’sinternational Internet connections have been improved step by step aftertechnical measures are taken and more data flows on land-based cables are opened up,according to the Vietnam Telecommunications Authority under the Ministry ofInformation and Communications.

However, the country’s Internetconnections may be still slow during peak time, the agency said. Four submarine cables Asia-America Gateway(AAG), Asia Africa Europe 1 (AAE-1), Asia Pacific Gateway (APG), and Intra Asia(IA) that connect the country to the world are experiencing issues, seriouslyaffecting performance and reliability as about 75% of international Internetconnections from Vietnam have been lost. Since February 10 when telecommunicationfirms took technical solutions and opened up more data flows on land-based cables, theInternet connections have been improved and 50% of international Internetcapacity has been restored. Nguyen Hong Thang, Director of the VietnamTelecommunications Authority, said that a coordination board was established tomonitor measures responding to the submarine cable incident. Notably, besides applying technicalmeasures, telecommunications firms also quickly opened more connection capacityon land cables to ensure service quality and interests for Internet users despite highcosts, he said. Following the direction of the Ministry ofInformation and Communications, telecommunications enterprises shared internationaltraffic with each other, for example, Viettel shared 100Gbps of internationalInternet connection capacity for VNPT. On the morning of February 12, VNPT's peakhour traffic was 94.95%, while Viettel's was 96% To completely solve this problem, VNPT hasnegotiated with partners to buy more Internet capacity on land and put it intouse in the next one or two weeks. A representative of Viettel said that itwill continue to negotiate to buy more capacity on land-based cables to ensurea minimum backup rate of 10%. Representatives of MobiFone and FPTTelecom said that they have applied technical measures to ensure the capacityof international connections. At peak hours on February 12, consumers ofFPT, MobiFone and CMC used about 80%, 73% and 88% of their internationaltraffic, respectively./.