Internet users in Vietnam will have to suffer slow connection speeds for at least 18 more days, as repairs to the undersea cable system, part of which broke down on Monday, can only begin on September 29 and will take a week to finish, a telecom firm said Wednesday.

Repair work is expected to be greatly affected by foul weather, especially Typhoon Kalmaegi, FPT Telecom general director, Nguyen Van Khoa, told tech newswire ICTNews.

A break in the Asia-America Gateway (AAG) cable system connecting the Vietnamese coastal city of Vung Tau and Hong Kong occurred somewhere near the latter’s coast at 11:41 pm on Monday, according to FPT Telecom, a major Internet service provider in Vietnam.

Internet speeds in the country thus plummeted to a snail’s pace due to the cut, the second in two months, after another break on July 16.

But repairs will not begin until September 29, and will finish on October 6, ICTnews quoted Khoa as saying.

“Repair progress can be slowed down by unstable weather,” Khoa noted.

The incident has affected Internet traffic for service providers in Vietnam, including FPT Telecom and VNPT.

Internet users of these telecom firms have experienced slow or overloaded connections when browsing websites hosted outside Vietnam, or sending emails and making phone and video calls to other countries.

On July 16, a cut was also identified on the AAG cable system near Vung Tau. The situation was rectified on July 27, enabling Internet quality in Vietnam to return to normal.

The AAG is a 20,000-kilometer-long submarine communications cable system, connecting Southeast Asia with the U.S. mainland, across the Pacific Ocean via Guam and Hawaii.

The cable has encountered frequent breaks and outages since it was completed in late 2009.

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