History Repeats Itself
Just shy of a year ago, I blogged about a massive undersea cable cut that crippled 
connectivity across much of Egypt and India, thought to be caused by a ship’s anchor. I thought for sure this not-so-natural disaster and its devastating results on communications in this part of the world would be a wake-up call to carriers everywhere that they need to focus on disaster planning in 2008.
As we enter the final days of this year, however, it seems everyone didn’t heed the warning. The same line has been damaged again and, while Egypt has been able to restore most of its communications by re-routing services according to the BBC UK, India’s national newspaper reports that Internet services in the country remain severely affected. No one seems to be able to give a firm date for the line’s expected fix.
Bravo to Egypt for learning from its mistakes and clearly planning ahead for the “what if” of a recurrence, but I can’t help but wonder what happened with India’s planning. Considering how critical Internet access is to India and its emerging tech industry, you would think that the country - or at least its tech companies - would have immediately put a plan in place to ensure last January’s connectivity loss didn’t happen again. Perhaps the plan is still being implemented. At least I hope so. Connectivity has become such a critical service to businesses and governments that disaster planning and business continuity cannot be left to chance.
