Three of Vietnam's five undersea internet cables are down

HANOI (Reuters) - Three out of Vietnam's five active international undersea internet cables are down, state media said over the weekend, the second major round of outages in the country in just over a year.

The problems with the three cables, which connect Vietnam with the United States, Europe and Asia, have "significantly affected Vietnam's internet connection with the world", reported the official Vietnam News Agency.

Vietnam is connected to the global internet mainly via five undersea cables with a combined capacity of nearly 62 Tbps, according to data from FPT, one of the country's top internet service providers.

It's not clear if the three cables referred to, which account for most of the bandwidth, are totally or partially down.

Internet service providers Viettel and VNPT, which have invested in the cables, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Vietnam News Agency said internet users were finding it particularly hard to access services that have servers located abroad.

No time frame for the repair of the cables has been given, the report said.

Undersea internet cable problems are not rare in Vietnam, which early last year saw all of its five cables disrupted for weeks.

(Reporting by Khanh Vu; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)