Ouch!  The Internet is not just a place to read the news, download music, catch up on the latest gossip or play games; it’s also where business is increasingly conducted.  This latest cable break reminds me of a line from the classic movie Groundhog Day in which Phil Connors (played by Bill Murray) is trying to place a  call to Pittsburgh to make his escape from Punxsutawney, PA but all of the phone lines are down because of a major snowstorm:  Come on, *all* the long distance lines are down? What about the satellite? Is it snowing in space?  Bottom line – we are, for better and for worse, reliant upon the Internet and dependent upon a 20,000-kilometer-long submarine communications cable system that connects Southeast Asia with the US mainland, across the Pacific Ocean via Guam and Hawaii.

Internet users in Vietnam will have to suffer slow connection speeds for at least 18 more days, as repairs to the undersea cable system, part of which broke down on Monday, can only begin on September 29 and will take a week to finish, a telecom firm said Wednesday.

Repair work is expected to be greatly affected by foul weather, especially Typhoon Kalmaegi, FPT Telecom general director, Nguyen Van Khoa, told tech newswire ICTNews.

Follow this link to read the rest of this 18.9.14 Tuoi Tre News article and say a prayer for good weather in the coming two weeks in the East Sea!

MAA