Bad news for sufferers of slow Internet in Vietnam: the repair job to restore connection will begin later and take more days to complete, a local telecom firm said Friday.

Engineers are expected to start repairing the rupture found last week in the Intra Asia (IA), one of four underwater Internet cable systems Vietnam is connected to, somewhere today, and will finish their work by 7:00 am on July 24, according to CMC Telecom.

Another local Internet service provider, Viettel, previously said repairs would be performed between July 12 and 19.

The cable break, identified in the IA cable section linking Vietnam and Singapore, resulted in snail’s pace connection speeds for users in Vietnam from July 9.

Subscribers to Viettel, one of Vietnam’s leading Internet service providers, were most affected, as the military-run telecom firm relies heavily on the IA cable to ensure Internet traffic for its customers.

The underwater cable system was launched in late 2009, connecting Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Japan. Spanning 6,800km, the system boasts a data transfer speed of 3.84Tbps. Among the Vietnamese Internet service providers, Viettel relies on this system most heavily.

The three other major submarine Internet cable systems Vietnam is internationally connected to are the AAG, SMW3 (Southeast Asia - Middle East - Western Europe 3), and TVH (Thailand-Vietnam-Hong Kong).

The IA incident came only ten days after the Asia America Gateway (AAG) cable system, crucial to Vietnam’s Internet connectivity, underwent regular maintenance between June 22 and 27.

AAG itself is infamous for repeated ruptures and cuts, which has left Internet users in grief many times in the last few years.

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