Vietnam Subsea Cable Outages: How to Build a Resilient Network for Your Business

If you have a factory or an online store in Vietnam, or a base of customers you reach through Zalo, the last few days of August 2026 were probably rough.

According to a Voice of Vietnam (VOV) report on August 28, the SJC2 and AAE-1 subsea cables connecting Vietnam to the global internet failed almost simultaneously on August 25, while earlier problems on the AAG and IA cables had not yet been fixed, leaving four international cables impaired at once. The SJC2 fault was in the Chung Hom Kok (Hong Kong) segment, and according to W.Media, AAE-1 had remained unrepaired since February this year. The carriers' advisory was blunt: at peak times, access to overseas social media, streaming and online games would be slower, while websites hosted inside Vietnam would be largely unaffected.

That last sentence is exactly what anyone doing business in Vietnam should think hard about.

Key Takeaways

• According to Voice of Vietnam (VOV), the SJC2 and AAE-1 subsea cables connecting Vietnam to the global internet failed almost simultaneously on August 25, 2026, leaving four international cables impaired at once alongside the still-unrepaired AAG and IA.
• Data cited by W.Media puts Vietnam at roughly 10 subsea cable incidents per year on average, with repairs often taking months.
• During Vietnam's subsea cable outages, access to overseas services slows noticeably, while websites hosted inside Vietnam are largely unaffected.
• According to Vietnamese e-commerce data firm Metric, Shopee held about 56% and TikTok Shop about 41% of Vietnam's e-commerce market in Q3 2025.
• IMIDC (Rainbow Network) does not currently operate its own data center in Vietnam, but provides Vietnam native IPs and Vietnam home broadband IPs and can build redundancy for Vietnam business through nearby Hong Kong CN2 GIA and Singapore nodes plus CDN/Anycast.

This Isn't an Accident: It's "Normal" for Vietnam's Network

Look through the news archive and you'll see that Vietnam's subsea cables run into trouble almost every year:

• June 2024: IA, APG and AAE-1 went down at the same time, leaving 3 of the country's 5 cables broken, and media reported that the repair time was unknown;
• August 2026: SJC2, AAE-1, AAG and IA all had problems at once.

Data cited by W.Media puts Vietnam at roughly 10 subsea cable incidents per year on average, with repairs often taking months. The reason isn't mysterious: Vietnam's international connectivity depends heavily on a handful of cables running through the South China Sea, and repair ships are in short supply worldwide, so the queue can stretch from weeks to months.

Carriers are catching up. Viettel said it added 800Gbps via IA and 300Gbps via APG this time, activated a terrestrial cable to Singapore via Laos, and plans to add another 1.5Tbps on that route. The ADC cable (landing at Quy Nhon), which entered service in 2025, is also seen as an important backup. But from the user side, links from Vietnam to the rest of the world become noticeably congested during outages. On expat forums like expat.com, almost every cable incident brings posts complaining about pages not loading, choppy video calls and having to transfer files in the small hours.

Factories Moved to Bac Ninh, and Network Problems Followed

Vietnamese statistics show that disbursed FDI in 2025 was about US$27.6 billion, the highest in five years, with manufacturing and processing accounting for over 80%. Mainland China was the second-largest source of newly registered capital. Bac Ninh, Bac Giang and Hai Phong now host many electronics, furniture and textile factories relocated from China.

These companies typically have "two-way" network needs:

1. Toward headquarters in China: ERP, OA, file servers and video conferencing hosted in mainland China or Hong Kong;
2. Toward overseas customers: corporate websites, inquiry systems and email hosted in Europe, North America or Singapore.

When cables fail, both directions have to squeeze through congested international links, and remote desktop, video conferencing and large file syncs are hit first.

Deployment recommendations:

• Host business systems serving your Vietnamese factory on closer Hong Kong CN2 GIA or Singapore nodes, which adds a layer of redundancy compared with connecting straight back to mainland China. Hong Kong reaches the mainland over optimized CN2 GIA routes, and Vietnam has multiple routes to both Hong Kong and Singapore, so a single cable failure won't take everything down.
• Use resumable transfers and off-peak scheduling for critical file syncs; don't expect to max out bandwidth during the day while an outage is ongoing.
• If you need a stable local Vietnamese identity online (for example, to log in to local government, banking or supplier platforms), configure a dedicated Vietnam native IP or home broadband IP.

Zalo: Vietnam's "WeChat", and Where Risk Controls Are Most Sensitive

Zalo's position in Vietnam is close to WeChat's in China. According to public data, it had about 83.1 million monthly active users in Q1 2026, with about 2.2 billion messages a day. For B2B trade and factory recruitment, customers, suppliers and workers are basically all on Zalo.

But Zalo also went through a controversy at the end of 2025: new user terms required users to "accept everything or have the account deleted after 45 days" and broadened data collection, and Vietnam's National Competition Commission summoned its parent company VNG. For foreign businesses, this means the platform will pay increasing attention to account environments and data compliance.

Common experience among Chinese exporters is that registering or logging in to Zalo with free email addresses or frequently changing IPs easily triggers verification or even restrictions. A stable IP from a local Vietnamese carrier, combined with email on your own company domain, makes the account environment much cleaner. If you've built integrations with Zalo OA / Mini Apps, we recommend hosting the server side in Singapore or Hong Kong and using a CDN to speed up access for Vietnamese users.

Shopee and TikTok Shop: The Fiercer the Competition, the Less Room for Network Failures

According to Vietnamese e-commerce data firm Metric, in Q3 2025 Shopee held about 56% of Vietnam's e-commerce market and TikTok Shop rose to about 41%, so the two almost monopolize it. Meanwhile, pressure on sellers is mounting:

• From July 2025, under Decree No. 117/2025, platforms began withholding VAT and personal income tax for individual sellers;
• From May 9, 2026, TikTok Shop Vietnam raised its transaction fee again (5% to 6%) along with commissions in several categories. In a report on the website of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), one seller summed it up: raise prices and customers hesitate; don't, and margins get eaten.

With margins squeezed, losses from account risk-control flags and laggy livestreams are even harder to absorb. If a Vietnamese livestream pushes its stream through a server overseas, dropped frames and broken streams during cable outages are almost inevitable.

Deployment recommendations:

• For Vietnamese stores, log in to seller dashboards from a fixed Vietnam native IP or static residential IP where possible, with one stable environment per store, and avoid frequent IP changes;
• Have a backup egress for livestream push links, and prefer routes via Singapore during cable outages;
• How platforms evaluate IP environments is determined by their official policies, so test before you rely on it. The above are general practices to reduce the likelihood of anomalies.

Why consider home broadband IPs? Home broadband IPs come from local Vietnamese residential broadband ranges, so their network characteristics are closer to those of ordinary local users. They suit localized operations such as everyday store dashboard logins, Zalo account management, and local content and influencer research. Used one IP per account and kept fixed over the long term, they help keep account environments consistent. Actual results depend on platform policies and your own testing; please use them in compliance with the rules.

A Cable-Outage-Resilient Deployment Plan

There's only one core principle: don't bet all your traffic on a single international link out of Vietnam.

How IMIDC Can Help

IMIDC (Rainbow Network) has served businesses expanding overseas since 2014. It does not currently operate its own data center in Vietnam, but can address the pain points above in the following ways:

• Local Vietnamese IP resources: IMIDC provides Vietnam native IPs and Vietnam home broadband IPs for localized use cases such as store operations and Zalo accounts; its overall IP resources cover 24 countries;
• Nearby nodes: Hong Kong (CN2 GIA), Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and other nodes are close to Vietnam. Non-CN2 nodes come with local native IPs and work well as origins or relays for Vietnam business;
• CDN / Anycast / BGP: let Vietnamese users connect to the nearest node and switch across multiple paths during outages. IMIDC is a member of APNIC, RIPE NCC and other organizations and can provide /24 multi-IP, ASN and other resources;
• SSD, 10Gbps ports, DDoS protection, free migration and 24/7 multilingual technical support.

FAQ

Will my website go down when Vietnam's subsea cables fail?

Usually it won't become completely inaccessible, but if your server is outside Vietnam, access for Vietnamese users will be noticeably slower during an outage, especially at peak times. Websites hosted inside Vietnam are largely unaffected. For sites serving Vietnamese users, use a CDN with Vietnam nodes or multi-region origins.

For Vietnam-facing servers, is Singapore or Hong Kong better?

If you mainly serve local Vietnamese users, Singapore is usually the safer bet, and it has a backup terrestrial route via Laos. If you also need good access for headquarters in China, Hong Kong CN2 GIA is a better fit. The most robust approach is to use both as mutual backups.

Do I need a Vietnam native IP for TikTok Shop Vietnam?

When operating a local Vietnamese store, using a fixed Vietnam native IP or residential IP helps keep your login environment consistent and reduces unusual verification prompts. Specific requirements depend on platform policy, so test before you rely on it, and operate in compliance with the rules.

How can I reliably log in to Zalo Vietnam from China?

Use a fixed local Vietnamese IP environment, register with email on your company domain, and avoid frequently changing IPs and devices; also comply with Zalo's latest user terms.

Related Articles

• Native IP vs Residential IP vs ISP IP vs Data Center IP: Differences and How to Check
• Singapore Servers
• How to Set Up a Network Environment for TikTok Operations and Livestreaming

Whether the cables get fixed isn't up to you, but whether your business deployment can withstand the outage is something you can plan for in advance. To learn more about Vietnam native IPs, home broadband IPs or nearby node options, visit https://www.imidc.com and contact our support team.

References

• VOV: Four undersea cables hit faults, Vietnam's international internet slows locally
• W.Media: Four out of six subsea cables in Vietnam out of service
• DCD: Three subsea cables go down in Vietnam (2024)
• The Investor: Vietnam's 2025 FDI disbursement hits 5-year high
• VCCI: Từ 9/5 TikTok Shop tiếp tục tăng biểu phí với nhà bán hàng
• Báo Văn hóa: Zalo trước thách thức về quyền riêng tư người dùng