By IANS
Bangalore/New Delhi : India’s Internet connectivity was disrupted Thursday after two undersea cables were damaged in the Mediterranean, although IT majors reported no impact on business. Smaller companies and individual surfers would, however, have to make do with slower speeds till the cables are repaired.
“Slow connectivity, choking and other problems have been caused across India due the cable damage,” Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) President Rajesh Chharia said, adding it may take 10-15 days for normalcy to be restored.
“Some 60 percent of the bandwidth has been affected after the damage,” he told IANS, as Internet surfers in the country struggled with slow speeds and repeated disconnections.
“The load is being borne by the remaining 40 percent,” Chharia said. The large IT companies like Wipro and Infosys Technologies were not affected as much since they had backups to reroute their traffic through the Pacific cables, he added.
“We have had no critical business impact. We have diversity in path and providers globally and hence, have not lost any connectivity to our offices or customers. We are continuously monitoring the situation and will be able to minimise any impact due to any further service or connectivity loss,” Infosys, India’s second largest IT company, said in a statement.
Prashanth Balarama, media relations manager of IBM India, told IANS over phone: “We have had no impact at all on the business side. We have reassigned the route.”
He, however, said that “there is slowdown in browsing the Internet”.
“We have had no impact at all. All our operations are functioning as usual,” said a spokesman of Wipro Ltd, which is India’s third largest software exporter.
But smaller and medium-sized business process outsourcing (BPO) companies were facing an acute shortage of bandwidth, leading to issues such as poor voice quality.
“The majority of IT companies and call centres using the Atlantic route to connect with the US have been badly affected,” Chharia said.
The National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) estimates the size of India’s outsourcing industry at $11 billion, with more than 700,000 employees. The industry caters to 25 countries with a 40 percent market share.
The extent of financial damage to BPO companies was still being ascertained.
According to reports from Cairo, two undersea cables were cut near Alexandria on Egypt’s north coast and one of them belonged to FLAG Telecom, which is a part of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group.
Chharia said firms that are serving the US east coast and some parts of Britain are the worst affected.
“They have to arrange for backups soon. Otherwise, they have to accept the poor quality for some time until the fibre is restored.”
Quoting Egyptian agencies, reports said the damage was caused during anchoring of a ship there. Apart from India, the breakdown affected Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain.
Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, among India’s neighbours, also reported disruptions.
Reports from Egypt suggested some delays in restoration work due to bad weather.
According to a spokesperson for the state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, India’s largest communications carrier, only 10-15 percent of international connectivity faced problems.