Internet speed in Vietnam has been hampered following a series of problems along three separate submarine cable systems of the country.

The Intra Asia (IA) cable network was broken on Tuesday morning, compromising services provided by Interne t operators in Vietnam, especially Viettel, the state-owned enterprise managed by the Ministry of National Defense, which is heavily reliant on this system.

The IA underwater cable system was launched in late 2009, connecting Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Japan.

Prior to the incident, a power loss was recorded along a section of the Asia America Gateway (AAG) cable off the southern beach city of Vung Tau on Sunday while leakage also occurred along the Asia- Pacific Gateway (APG) in Singapore.   

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

The APG links 8 countries and regions in the Asia-Pacific, namely Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China, Japan, and South Korea.

Internet speed in Vietnam was significantly impacted by the series of incidents as many users reported sluggish speed, especially when trying to connect using foreign servers.

Speaking with Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper, representatives from local service providers said the problem would not last long thanks to back-up connections.

Accordingly, VNPT-VinaPhone redirected its traffic to the China-Southeast Asia Terrain Cable System (CSC), and the SMW3 (Southeast Asia - Middle East - Western Europe 3).

A representative from Viettel also said that the firm had utilized its back-up systems as soon as the problem along the IA network was detected.