The Hindu Business Line : Internet services continue to be disrupted

New Delhi, Dec. 22 Internet services continued to be disrupted across the country for the third day today even as telecom companies said they were ramping up their international long distance network to offer alternative under sea cable routes.

Smaller Internet companies and business process outsourcing units bore the brunt of the impact due to the cable cut, which occurred on Friday. “For small BPOs which rely on Internet services, the service level agreement with clients is suffering. The situation is likely to continue till (December 26) the restoration work is complete,” said Mr S.V. Ramana, President, Other Service Providers Association of India (OSPAI).

“Internet services were hit on Monday as today was the first working day after the cable cut occurred late on Friday. It will take at least a week before it gets normal,” said Mr Rajesh Chharia, President, Internet Service Providers Association of India.

There has been a fibre cut on the SEA-ME-WE 4, SEA-ME-We3 and FLAG affecting the overall traffic between India and Europe. While Bharti Airtel and Tata Communications are part of the consortium on the two SEA-ME-WE cables, RCom owns FLAG. The three cable network carries 75 per cent of international data traffic from India to the Pacific region.

When contacted, Bharti Airtel said, “Bharti Airtel is working with the cable consortium for restoration of services. The voice traffic has been completely normalised. Bharti Airtel is taking all necessary steps to ensure data services are available to its customers by routing traffic on alternative routes like its i2i undersea cable.”

Tata Communications is working on the SEA-ME-WE 4 cable and is expecting it to be restored by Friday.

This is the second time that cable cut has affected India’s Internet services in the past one year. Earlier, RCom’s two under sea cables – FLAG and FALCON – had snapped causing major disruption in Internet services. RCom had claimed that the cables were damaged due to ship anchorage in the Gulf region. The damaged cables led to poor Internet services for 3-4 days in February.

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