Repairs to the damaged Asia-America Gateway (AAG) cable are on track to be complete by October 3, restoring Vietnam's internet access to normal.
Repairs commenced on Friday – instead of today as usually planned – and will be carried out over the next few days, Vietnamese Breaking Newsreported.
The welding process for the damaged subsea cable is scheduled to complete late on Wednesday, and the cable will be back up to 100% capacity by this time. October 2 and the early hours of October 3 will then be spent re-burying the cable.
Repair work was able to be expedited due to more favorable than expected weather conditions and to Hong Kong authorities allowing the cable layer to enter its waters earlier than expected, the report states.
The AAG-1 cable was damaged earlier this month on the link between Vietnam and Hong Kong, slowing internet connections in Vietnam and (to a lesser extent) elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
It was the second major outage on the AAG since July. The first cut disrupted internet services in Vietnam for two weeks.
The AAG has the highest capacity of any of Vietnam's four subsea cable links, leaving the nation particularly vulnerable to disruption when it is damaged.