Asia-America Gateway

Asia-America Gateway
Total length 20,000-kilometre (12,000 mi)
Date of first use 10 November 2009 (2009-11-10)

The Asia-America Gateway (AAG) is a 20,000-kilometre (12,000 mi) long submarine communications cable system, connecting South-East Asia with the mainland of the United States, across the Pacific Ocean via Guam and Hawaii. [1][2]

The cable is capable of delivering up to 2.88 Tbit/s (US-Hawaii & Hong Kong-South East Asia) and 1.92 Tbit/s (Hawaii-Hong Kong). The cable was ready for service on November 10, 2009.[3]

Development of the AAG cable system was funded, at a cost of $500 million USD,[2] by 19 partners: The Authority for Info-Communications Technology Industry of Brunei Darussalam, AT&T (USA), BayanTel (Philippines), Bharti (India), British Telecom Global Network Services (UK), CAT Telecom (Thailand), Telkom Indonesia (Indonesia), ETPI (Philippines), FPT Telecom (Vietnam), Ezecom/Telcotech (Cambodia), Indosat (Indonesia), PLDT (Philippines), Saigon Postal Corporation (Vietnam), StarHub (Singapore), Telekom Malaysia, Telstra (Australia), Telecom New Zealand, Viettel (Vietnam), and the Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group. The cable has landing points at the USA, Hawaii, Guam, Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei and Vietnam.[1][4][5]

Outages

The cable has encountered frequent breaks and outages since it was made ready for service in late 2009. Most of the outages have been located at the intra-Asia segments between Hong Kong and Singapore, while the segment between Hong Kong and the Philippines seems to have fewer problems. The segments between the Philippines and the United States are quite stable. Countries such as Vietnam and Malaysia, which currently have fewer alternatives in place to reroute Internet traffic, are prone to severe service disruption when the AAG cable breaks, whereas Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Philippines, which are served by many different intra-Asia cables, are less affected.[6]

2011

On March 10, the cable segment off the coast of Vung Tau, Vietnam was damaged, causing severe disruption to international internet services throughout Vietnam.[7] On March 27, the cable was finally repaired, restoring full internet capacity.[8] Two more cable breaks occurred in the cable segment off Vung Tau on August 6 and August 31, disrupting Internet services in Vietnam.[6] On October 2, a break occurred in the cable segment between Hong Kong and the Philippines. Because the segment forms part of the cable's trunk, rather than a branch, internet services were disrupted throughout Southeast Asia.[6]

2013

On December 20, 2013, the segment off the coast of Vung Tau was again damaged, affecting some 60% of international Internet traffic.[9]

2014

On July 15, 2014 the segment off the coast of Vung Tau was again damaged, and the internet bandwidth to international destinations was disrupted. VNPT's Viet Nam Data Communications Company Deputy Director Nguyen Hong Hai, said that the time that it would take for repairing the cable had not yet been determined. On July 27, the line was finally mended, 3 days earlier than the scheduled date.[10]

On September 15, 2014 a segment of the cable between Vung Tau and Hong Kong was damaged, which was expected to cause network slowdowns in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Guam and the Philippines. In early reports, the cable break was identified as being in the same area as the July 15 incident, off the Vietnamese shoreline near Vung Tau. A representative of Vietnam's FPT Telecom said that this incident was most likely caused by anchors from local ships dragging along the shoreline, and blamed the cable's poor technical design as a factor in the repeated breaks.[11][12] Later reports contradicted earlier reports of the break being off the coast of Vung Tau, stating instead that section S1I, off the coast of Hong Kong, had ruptured.[13]

Initially expected to be mended within the 20 days of the incident, repairs experienced a setback when a new rupture was found. The new break, 68 km off the coast of Hong Kong, was only 4 km away from the original one. A date of October 3, 2014 was given for full restoration of service, with repair operations continuing until October 5.[14][15]

2015

On 5 January 2015, the cable was damaged yet again at section S1H which connects Vung Tau and Hong Kong. The Vung Tau station launched a search effort in order to identify the point of fracture.[16][17] Internet speeds returned to normal once the fault was identified and repaired by 22 January 2015.[18]

The snail-paced Internet speed users in Vietnam have been suffering since Thursday, 23 April 2015 is not brought about by a submarine cable cut as widely thought and it will take three weeks, or a month at worst, for repairs. This is the 2nd time this submarine cable is causing headaches to Vietnamese accessing US and European sites. With the increasing use of YouTube and Facebook, the internet in Vietnam comes to a crawl and "Err-timed out" and "unable to find website" became a common error message when accessing overseas site.[19] 2015 is viewed as one of the most troublesome years for the AAG cable as another outage occurred on May 26 along with a scheduled maintenance outage in June.

References

  1. 1 2 "Asia-America Gateway". www.asia-america-gateway.com. 2008. Archived from the original on January 5, 2010. Retrieved 2009-12-24.
  2. 1 2 "Faster Starhub broadband" (Press release). www.straitstimes.com. December 8, 2009. Archived from the original on December 12, 2009. Retrieved 2009-12-24.
  3. ↑ "AAG Submarine Cable System". Submarine Cable Networks. June 20, 2011. Retrieved 2012-02-21.
  4. ↑ "Asia America Gateway (AAG)" (PDF). www.telstrainternational.co.uk. 2009. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 22, 2009. Retrieved 2009-12-24.
  5. ↑ "Consortium to Develop Proposal for Asia – America Gateway Cable System" (PDF). REACH. June 1, 2006. Retrieved 2008-12-24.
  6. 1 2 3 "AAG Cable Breaks and Restoration". Submarine Cable Networks. October 20, 2011. Retrieved 2012-02-21.
  7. ↑ Asia-America Gateway Cable Cut Disrupted Internet in Vietnam
  8. ↑ Internet Services in Vietnam Restored after AAG Cable Repaired
  9. ↑ Internet traffic hit as cable cut off Vietnam’s coast
  10. ↑ "Internet quốc tế khôi phục hoàn toàn sớm hơn dự kiến".
  11. ↑ "Vietnam service provider blames poor design for submarine Internet cable fractures". Tuoi Tre. 2014-09-22. Retrieved 2014-09-29.
  12. ↑ "Oh hell no... Slow internet misery caused by broken undersea cable to last 20 more days". TechInAsia. 2014-09-22. Retrieved 2014-09-29.
  13. ↑ "Vietnam's Internet disrupted again by 2nd cable cut in 2 months". Tuoi Tre. 2014-09-16. Retrieved 2014-09-29.
  14. ↑ "Vietnam's internet cable ruptures, again". Thanh Nien. 2014-09-29. Retrieved 2014-09-29.
  15. ↑ "New cut found on submarine cable system providing Internet connection to Vietnam". Tuoi Tre. 2014-09-29. Retrieved 2014-09-29.
  16. ↑ "Submarine cable that feeds Vietnam with Internet disrupted again". Tuoi Tre. 2015-01-05. Retrieved 2015-01-05.
  17. ↑ "Trans-Pacific cable snaps, slowing down Internet in Vietnam". Thanhnien News. 2015-01-05. Retrieved 2015-01-05.
  18. ↑ "Internet in Vietnam back to 100% normal as cable cut welded: report". Tuoi Tre. 2015-01-29. Retrieved 2015-01-29.
  19. ↑ "Cause of Vietnam's snail-like Internet speed identified; repairs to take a month". Tuoi Tre. 2015-04-24. Retrieved 2015-04-19.
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