Weekend reprieve for BPOs as ship damages submarine cables

Breaks in three submarine cables that link Europe and West Asia have disrupted internet and international telephone services in parts of West and South Asia, slowing down internet and voice traffic, though the impact on India’s call centres has been minimal.

As in February, the damage to the cables this time too was caused by a ship’s anchor, disrupting Sea Me We4, Sea Me We3, and FLAG. This is the first time that three major undersea cables have been damaged.

Sea Me We3 and Sea Me We4 are owned by phone companies including Bharti Enterprises. FLAG is owned by Anil Ambani’s Reliance Globalcom. Submarine cables, as the name says, are laid beneath the surface of the sea to carry telephone and internet traffic. They can be broken or damaged by fishing trawlers, a ship’s anchor, undersea avalanches and even shark bites.

A statement from France Telecom said Sea Me We4 could be up by December 25 and the situation back to normal by the end of December.

This being a weekend, the volume of traffic at most business process outsourcing, or BPO, units in the country was low. Besides, most BPOs have connections from both the Pacific and Atlantic routes. If one route is affected, the load moves to the other. Companies with global delivery centres divert some work to other centres. A considerable amount of high-end analytics work can be done offline.
 

INITIAL IMPACT ON VOICE TRAFFIC
	(%)

India82 Saudi Arabia55 Djibouti71 Egypt52 United Arab Emirates68 Lebanon16 Malaysia42 Maldives100 Pakistan51 Qatar73 Syria36 Taiwan39 Yemen38 Zambia62 Source: France Telecom

“The impact has been minimal. We had a re-routing of traffic at the same time as the cable cut and therefore there was a 10-15-minute disturbance. With regards to internet there was some latency as the Atlantic route was affected,” said Sunil Gujral, executive vice-president and chief technology officer, Quatrro.

The company has taken internet connectivity from Bharti and Telstra. While Telstra has a focussed line from Pacific, Bharti takes care of the other routes.

Subramanya C, global chief technology officer with HTMT Solutions, said the company had multiple service providers. “We do have connection from Sea Me We4 and Flag, but we also have services from i2i and two other service providers,” he said.

On the frequency of such incidents, Subramanya said: “As a part of the industry we have taken up this issue. But from a service providers’ view, in such a scenario they also have priority shifting.”
 

HOW TO FIX IT

* Find the location of the accident, drag the damaged part to the surface, replace it

* Send light pulses along the fibre in the cable to determine the location

* A working fibre transmits pulses, a broken one bounces it back

* Send a large cable ship with a few miles of fresh fibre-optic lines

* If the faulty part is less than 4,000 feet below the surface, send a submersible robot

* The robot finds the faulty cable, cuts it, pulls the loose ends up to the ship

* If the faulty part is deeper, use a grapnel to cut the cable and hold it

* A skilled technician splices the glass fibres, uses adhesives to attach the new section of cable

* The repaired cable is lowered back to the seabed on ropes

The situation was similar at Mumbai-based Firstsource Solutions. “So far we have not had any major impact. We have redundancy built into the systems. So the moment a line goes down, the traffic is routed to other circuits. The same will happen in this case,” said Sanjiv Dalal, chief technology officer.

EXL Services was not perturbed either. “While the volumes are low, most of the companies, including EXL, have three-four suppliers. Moreover, these scenarios are a part of the disaster recovery and back-up plans,” said a spokesperson.