Flag cable cut adds to woes of Indian BPOs

Indian business process outsourcing (BPO) units continue to be hounded by bandwidth problems as another cable system owned by telecom operator Reliance Communications (RCom) got cut on Friday.

This is on the back of rupturing of two undersea cable systems that disrupted internet and telecom operations in Asia and the Middle East. It will be a while before the cables can be repaired as bad weather is preventing ships from reaching the site.

The voice operations (call centres) of IT-BPO firms, which comprise around 20-30 per cent of most firms in India, will be the most affected since the International Private Leased Circuits (IPLCs) are down. IPLC is a dedicated leased line circuit.

The main problem faced by many small- and medium-sized KPO and BPO firms is that they are not able to work on their near-term 'deliverables', and also not able to send completed assignments that are in the pipeline to their clients, notes industry body Ficci.

RCom's submarine cable system Falcon "" connecting five Middle East nations, Indian sub-continent, Sudan and Egypt "" was cut, 56 kms from Dubai on the segment between United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman, according to Flag Telecom website. Falcon cable system is a subsidiary of Rcom, which is held through Flag Telecom.

Apart from Falcon, consortium cable SEA-ME-WE-4 (SMW-4) and Flag Europe-Asia cable were the others that were affected after a ship's anchor was dropped on the cable channels.

All these cable systems support the bandwidth-intensive Indian BPO industry, which does back-office services for clients across the world. Flag said it has arranged part of restoration through terrestrial routes, jointly with Saudi Arabian Integrated Telecom Company.

Flag Telecom said its repair ship is expected to reach the accident spot, 8 km off Alexandria coast, by February 5. FLAG has arranged part of the restoration capacity on i2i system on east of India and restored Internet and IPLC traffic.

Meanwhile, Tata group owned Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd, a consortium partner and network administrator for SMW-4, said it restored majority of its IP connectivity into Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

This was done within 24 hours of the cable breakdown, they claimed. The services in India too were largely restored within 24 hours of the disruption by diverting traffic through the Tata-Indicom-Chennai cable and SMW-3, it said.