An undersea cable broke on Friday, leaving Internet connections in Vietnam shaky with reports saying the problem could remain unsolved for at least a month.

Online newspaper VnExpress quoted an agency managing the Asia America Gate Way cable as saying that the accident affected international connections from Vietnam, meaning that services like access to foreign websites and sending emails to addresses on foreign servers were difficult.

Domestic services were unaffected, it said.

The 20,000-kilometer cable, starting in Malaysia and ending in the US, broke at the section between Vietnam and Hong Kong, according to the news report.

In Vietnam, a 314-kilometer cable section is linked to the southern beach town of Vung Tau, and exploited by four major local Internet providers, namely FPT Telecom, VNPT, Viettel, and SPT.

Representatives of the companies said that they have switched to back-up cables to reduce impacts on their services, but still asked customers to reserve international connections for important services.

An unnamed VNPT official said they could not tell now when the cable will be fixed and the cause has yet to be identified.

The repair will possibly last between four and seven weeks, the companies said.

Since 2011, AAG has broken or gone under maintenance on different occasions, affecting Internet connections.

The cable is the only one connecting Southeast Asia with the US. It has landing stations in the continental US, Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei and Vietnam.

The US$560 million cable was launched in April 2007 and was connected to Vung Tau in November 2009.

