Cuba Up, Vietnam Down: Recent Subsea Cable Developments
Recent submarine cable-related developments have impacted internet connectivity in locales as diverse as Vietnam, Cuba, India, the Marshall Islands and Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. In this blog post, we report on positive developments in Cuba and Russia and a few notable cable failures in other parts of the world.
Vietnam
The internet of Vietnam got off to a shaky start in 2017 when, on 8 January, the America-Asia Gateway (AAG) submarine cable experienced yet another of its many failures. In September of last year, Tuoi Tre News reported that AAG had suffered its 10th failure in three years, prompting VietnamNet to ask the question: Why does the AAG underwater cable have to be repaired so often? Over the years, we have frequently analyzed these cable breaks. (For example, see this, this or this.)
Internet performance in Ho Chi Minh City suffers greatly during these unfortunate episodes. For Saigontourist Cable Television (SCTV), the recent break meant a brief disruption in connectivity and the loss of NTT transit as illustrated below.
