The Hindu : National : Pacific route gives a breather

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Saturday, Feb 02, 2008
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National

Pacific route gives a breather

Sandeep Joshi

NEW DELHI: There was substantial improvement in India’s Internet connectivity as international long distance (ILD) service providers shifted their traffic to the Pacific route.

On Friday, less than 20 per cent links were down, while on Thursday the impact of the underwater cable cut, that occurred in Mediterranean sea off the coast of Egypt, was much severe affecting over 50 per cent of India’s Internet traffic.

According to Internet Service Providers’ Association of India president, Rajesh Chharia, there was a marked improvement in the connectivity on Friday, thanks to the international bandwidth providers who shifted the traffic to the lines passing under the Pacific route.

“By late Friday evening, Internet connectivity is expected to be more than 90 per cent, thanks to the shifting of traffic on war-footing. In another day or two, complete normality is likely to be restored, while the complete cable repair work might take 10-15 days,” he added.

Indian information technology and business process outsourcing (BPO) firms were hit on Thursday when two marine cables — SEA-ME-WE 4 cable (SMW-4) and FLAG cable — connecting India to Western Europe were snapped near Alexandria off the coast of Egypt on Wednesday, affecting services of ILD services providers, including the VSNL, Reliance and Bharti Airtel.

According to Mr. Chharia, the small companies having single route connections were the ones that were badly affected due to the snag.

The big BPO and IT companies were not that severely affected as they have back-up systems and plans, but the shifting of traffic did slowdown their communications network and Internet connectivity on Thursday, he said.

“The geographical location of India gives it an edge over other nations as we can provide international connectivity through two different routes — Mediterranean and Pacific routes. This is the reason why we were able to cope with this problem in such a short time. However, to ensure that this changeover is even quicker in case connectivity snag occurs in future, we have requested the ILD service providers to strengthen their back-up plan so that transfer of traffic could take place within hours and not within days,” Mr. Chharia added.

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