The Hindu Business Line : TRAI calls Bharti, VSNL, RCom to discuss cable cut

It has been proposed to set up a code whereby in times of a crisis, capacity should be made available to each other within 24 hours of a request by any of the under-sea cable operator.

Thomas K. Thomas

New Delhi, Feb. 7 The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has called a meeting of the three primary owners of under-sea cables in India — Bharti, Reliance Communications and Tata-managed VSNL — in a bid to set up a mechanism that would make India’s communication network more resilient against cable cuts in future.

The move follows damages to three under-sea cables last week disrupting Internet services across the globe, especially in India and the Gulf region.

While the cables have been almost restored, it is now threatening to snowball into a major corporate battle among the various under-sea cable operators in India.

Reliance Communications, which owns two of the three damaged cables, has approached the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India seeking its intervention on the grounds that other cable operators did not co-operate with it to provide an alternate route. RCom’s main concern is that Bharti Airtel had allegedly sought much higher tariffs than the prevailing market rates for additional bandwidth. RCom’s claims are being supported by some of the Internet Service Providers who had taken capacity on Reliance’s FLAG under-sea cable.

Fool-proof network

ISPs said that in times of crisis there should be co-operation among the cable operators so that the end-consumers do not suffer.

“The disruption in Internet services following the cable cut should act as an indicator to what could go potentially wrong and therefore we should do everything possible to make the network foolproof to be prepared for such eventualities in future,” said an ISP industry official.

It has been proposed to set up a code whereby in times of a crisis, capacity should be made available to each other within 24 hours of a request by any of the under-sea cable operator.

However, sources in the rival camp said that it was an attempt by RCom to cover up its poor planning. They pointed out that along with the Reliance-owned cables, SEA-Me-WE-4 — in which Bharti and VSNL have a stake — had also been damaged.

“It is obvious that Bharti, VSNL and RCom are in the same boat; yet only one is crying wolf.

While Bharti and VSNL were able to provide redundancy to their clients very quickly, RCom had not planned for such an eventuality,” said a Bharti source.

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