M A I N   N E W S

Internet users cut off from cyberspace
R. Suryamurthy and Ajay Banerjee
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 9
Net users in the country were faced with logjam today following damage to crucial undersea transcontinental optic fibre cables connecting the country onto the worldwide web.

With the undersea cable link of Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited snapping between Dubai and Saudi Arabia. “The traffic is being routed through the cable link of Flag Telecom,” senior officials of the VSNL told The Tribune.

Officials said the problem is being rectified. The traffic is being routed through the Flag Telecom and there should be not much problem in surfing the Internet.

They, however, did not state the reason behind snapping and when normalcy would be restored. However, net users had a different story to tell. Rakesh Mohan, a college student, said “getting connected was a difficult thing today and when connected it was too slow.”

From Mumbai — the base of the undersea cable — other cities are connected through optic fibre cables or through the INSAT satellite. In Chandigarh Puncom the biggest bandwidth provider is linked through the satellite. Puncom leases out lines to private ISPs in the region and this includes major players in the business. Sources said the business of leading software companies located in S.A.S. Nagar and Chandigarh was suffering.

The link between Mumbai and other cities is okay, said sources in the IT sector. The satellite is doing fine and so are optic fibre connections. Worried ISPs in Chandigarh called up Puncom this morning. Mr Sandeep Sharma, Director of Glide, an ISP, said “we have put our users through our own gateway”. He however said authorities should have informed them in time.

Several corporate customers of the VSNL faced the problem of connectivity and IT firms suffered losses of revenue due to poor connectivity.

The VSNL is the country’s largest Internet service provider (ISP) in the country. The undersea cable was partially damaged near West Asia resulting in reduction of the data that it can carry. The cable has a maximum capacity of 600 mega bytes per second and due to the fault it could carry only 400 mbps.

The 39,000 km undersea cable link is provided by Sea MeWe 3, is the world’s longest. The VSNL recently commissioned its gigabyte routed Internet exchange at Mumbai which enables it to deliver high speed and flexible dedicated links for the Indian Internet networks.

The new routed exchange forms the prime hub between the Sea Me-We 3 optical fibre system and the country’s Internet network comprising over 200 ISPs, 400 nodes and over 1000 corporate leased lines. The snap in the cable link comes at a time when the IT industry is facing a gloomy future with the US economy slowing down and technology stocks crashing. The IT industry has been seeking better connectivity and bandwidth for the country to capitalise on the potential this sector offers in the future.

In the years to come, the netizens would have choice players like Bharti and DSL entering the market and laying undersea cable. The Nasscom-McKinsey report has estimated the IT enabled services to grow to $ 17 billion industry and employ more than one million people by 2008. The global IT enabled services opportunity are likely to grow to $ 142 billion by 2008.