Undersea snap halves Net bandwidth

NEW DELHI: The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) jumped into action on Thursday as complaints of internet breakdown throughout the country refused to stop.

In a statement issued late evening, DoT said “Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL), Reliance Communications and Bharti Airtel are in constant touch with Telecom Egypt to ensure the speedy repair of the two submarine cables SEA-ME-WE-4 and FLAG.”

SEA-ME-WE is acronym for South-East Asia, Middle East and West Europe, while Flag stands for Fibre-optic Link Around the Globe.

The latest status as per the DoT: Out of the total links working on these cables, approximately 30% links are restored and efforts are being made on war footing for providing alternate path to remaining links.

It is learnt that DoT called an urgent meeting with upstream providers so that they could help offer the alternate Pacific route to Reliance’s FLAG.

“This is a national problem and cooperation in the industry is the only way forward,” an industry representative said.

There are three upstream providers of bandwidth — Reliance’s FLAG, Bharti and VSNL. However, it is believed that while Bharti and VSNL (as part of SEA-ME-WE consortium) have bandwidth capacity in both Atlantic and Pacific, FLAG’s capacity is mainly in the Atlantic.

So, Bharti and VSNL are able to re-route traffic much more easily than FLAG, sources pointed out.

It all started on Wednesday when the two undersea cables connecting India and Western Europe, near Alexandria off the Coast of Egypt, broke down after heavy storms.

The chairman of the Egyptian telecom major Orascom, Naguib Sawiris, told DNA Money that the internet connectivity situation was improving on Thursday.

Even as Egypt and the Gulf regions faced maximum disruption in internet services, users in India too have been facing slowdown in internet connectivity and download speed. In several pockets in India, internet just failed to connect despite series of attempts.

Complete restoration of the undersea cable links would take at least a fortnight, according to the president of the Internet Service Providers of India (ISPAI) Rajesh Chharia.

“It’s a long-time solution,” he said. The cut in bandwidth is estimated at around 50 to 60%.

Countries across the world, including India, had witnessed a similar breakdown of internet services in December 2006, due to an earthquake in Taiwan. It had taken almost two months for complete restoration of service then.

President of the Association of Public ICT Tools Access Providers (cybercafes), Ashish Saboo, said that, “people are walking out in frustration when they cannot connect to the Net.” He added that business of cybercafes is down by around 40%.

Meanwhile, the industry denied that there would be any revenue impact on the companies because of the undersea cable breakdown. FLAG CEO Puneet Garg, during an analysts’ meet, said “there’s no revenue loss” as enterprise customers opt for alternate routes.

Insurance against cable breakdown due to weather conditions is yet another reason that the service providers don’t have to face any financial losses. Garg added that FLAG will soon have a fully resilient system.

The Bharti spokesperson said, “We have taken significant steps to ensure services are available by routing traffic through alternative paths.”

The VSNL spokesperson said that a part of its traffic has already been restored, without giving any additional information.