If your internet goes down, how long can you keep running?
In February 2023, all five submarine cable routes connecting Vietnam to the world were damaged simultaneously. 75% of international bandwidth vanished overnight. In June 2024, it happened again – three of five cables went down with no confirmed repair timeline.
This isn’t a rare event. Vietnam averages around 15 submarine cable incidents per year, with repairs taking anywhere from one to three months. No ISP – FPT, Viettel, VNPT, or CMC – can fully guarantee your connection, because every provider runs on the same shared physical infrastructure beneath the sea.
1. What does an outage actually cost you?
Many businesses treat internet connectivity as a utility – something you report and wait to get fixed. But for FDI companies running global ERP systems, holding video calls with headquarters in Seoul or Tokyo, and processing export orders in real time, every hour offline is revenue and productivity walking out the door.
According to the ITIC 2024 survey, more than 90% of mid-size and large enterprises lose over $300,000 for every hour of downtime. In sectors like manufacturing, banking, and retail, that figure can exceed $5 million per hour.
For a mid-size FDI operation in Vietnam: 50 employees offline for two hours equals 100 lost working hours – plus delayed shipments and cancelled calls with overseas partners. You don’t need to be Samsung for this to hurt.
2. What does a second connection actually solve?
This isn’t about plugging in an extra cable for peace of mind. A properly configured dual-internet setup delivers:
- Auto Failover: Primary connection drops → secondary takes over within seconds, automatically, no manual intervention required
- Load Balancing: Both connections share the traffic load, increasing real-world throughput
- Session continuity: VPN tunnels, ERP systems, and video calls stay live without interruption
The critical point: both connections must come from ISPs with physically independent infrastructure. Two FPT lines means when FPT has a problem, both go down together. FPT + Viettel, or VNPT + CMC Telecom – that’s genuine redundancy.
For businesses that want a true last line of defense, adding a 4G/5G SIM as a final fallback is worth considering – as history has shown, even two fixed-line connections can be affected simultaneously.
3. Cost vs. risk – have you done the math?
Adding a second leased line or a 4G backup typically costs a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per month. Set that against the cost of even a few hours of downtime, and the math is straightforward.
The real question isn’t whether you need it. It’s this: if your internet fails at 9am on a Monday morning, how long can your business actually hold on?
