A gloomy weekend is anticipated for Internet users in Vietnam, with the country’s major fiber optic cable system set for a three-day maintenance period.

The Asia-America Gateway (AAG) submarine cable system will begin three days of maintenance on Friday, a representative from Vietnam’s SPT Telecom firm said Tuesday.

Internet speed for users in Vietnam is therefore expected to slow down, especially when they use services or websites hosted overseas such as Facebook and Google.

However, Vu Anh Tu, deputy general director of FPT Telecom, a major Internet service provider, said the maintenance will have almost no impact on Internet connection speed or quality for the company’s subscribers.

Only the section between Singapore and Vietnam will be maintained, and this part of the whole system carries merely a small proportion of FPT Telecom’s traffic, he told newswire VnExpress.

Other Internet carriers, such as Viettel and VNPT, did not comment on the issue.

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.

Vietnam is connected to four international submarine Internet cable systems, namely the AAG, SMW3 (Southeast Asia - Middle East - Western Europe 3), TVH (Thailand-Vietnam-Hong Kong), and IA (Intra Asia).

But Internet traffic in Vietnam is greatly affected whenever the AAG cable ruptures, as the system has the largest capacity out of the four.

In 2015 the AAG was damaged three times, with the most recent incident in June.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!