Flash in the pan: Vietnam’s infamous undersea Internet cable ruptures again A man uses his mobile phone to surf the Internet in Hanoi. The undersea cable connecting Vietnam with the US broke again on Tuesday afternoon, the third time this year. Photo: Bloomberg Two weeks of normal Internet access in Vietnam have proved fleeting as the sea cable connecting that country with the US broke again on Tuesday afternoon, the third time this year. A source from the managing center of the Asia America Gateway (AAG) said the cable ruptured at around 4:30 p.m. Details of where the break occurred have remained sketchy. In the past the AAG cable, which is used by VNPT and three other Internet providers, FPT Telecom, Viettel and SPT, took place at the portion between southern Vietnam and Hong Kong. News website VnExpress quoted unidentified sources as saying that the rupture occurred at a section around 38 kilometers off the coast of Vung Tau. VnExpress quoted Lam Quoc Cuong, director of state-owned telecom giant VNPT International, as saying that the break had caused intermittent Internet access in Vietnam but it had been almost fixed. The news website also quoted several Internet users in Hanoi as saying that international connections were slower than normal this afternoon. It is not immediately clear what caused the rupture and how long it will take to completely fix it. The same segment of the 20,000-kilometer cable broke on April 13 and was only fixed on May 12. This is not the first time the notorious cable, laid in 2007, has had problems. The same segment had also snapped last January, and it had taken three weeks to fix it. Similar ruptures have occurred seven times since 2011, prompting local investors to invest in a new undersea cable linking Vietnam with Japan, which is expected to be ready next year. Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Bac Son had said last month that ruptures in the cable could be caused by many things, including fishing nets and even sabotage. Thanh Nien News