Abhinav Bhatt, Supriya Shrinate, Ketki Angre
Thursday, January 31, 2008 (New Delhi, Mumbai)
If you're used to beginning your day by logging on to the net, brace yourself for a huge slowdown over the next few days.
That's how long it could take to restore Internet services in India and large parts of West Asia to their normal level.
Net access in these areas has been hit following damage to two undersea cables in the Mediterranean Sea.
Padmanabh Deshpande, a net addict begins a new day like any other, the pages open relatively quickly much better unlike last night when he took unwanted breaks watching TV and drinking coffee waiting for his mails to open.
''Last night was bad only four mails opened in one hour,'' said Deshpande.
For others logging in was as difficult, but they were prepared as their service providers had sent a mail saying that services were affected.
For many BPOs and banks a storm off the coast of Egypt has caused ripples on many servers back home.
Internet service providers in India have put the disruption at 60 per cent of normal services while those in Egypt have been affected up to 70 per cent.
Virtual rescue operations have begun with most ISP's sending technical staff to restore their damaged cables but it may about two weeks to get speedy access.
Other countries affected in West Asia are the UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Call centres located in these areas have been affected, as well as international calls, which are now being rerouted.
The cable service provider has said the disruption was caused by a ship that accidentally cut the cable, after it was diverted from the Egyptian port of Alexandria due to bad weather.
The Internet cables link Europe to India Just off the Egyptian port at Alexandria. The cables are very thick and well anchored to the seabed, at times below the seabed.
There has been tremendous loss of bandwidth leading to the slowing down or total collapse of net services.
Delhi logged out
And it's not just the link to the web world that may have been snapped in Egypt but time came to a standstill for its users in Delhi as well.
Twenty-five-year old Ajit was trying hard to cope with life beyond the Web world but found it excruciatingly difficult.
He said he could not complete important office work and worst of all, he was unable to chat.
Internet providers reported at least a 50 per cent loss in service due to the disruption in connection.
But cyber cafes had no explanation for their customers about why the Net was erratic and why business was suffering.
''We are unable to access any website. Customers are disappointed by this. The Internet is really very slow,'' said Sahil, a Net user.
Although the Indian Internet Service Providers have said they have started a downgraded service, full restoration may be possible only after 10 to 15 days.
It's time enough, perhaps, for Delhizens to learn about life beyond the Net.
For most of us who feel that the Internet and voice and data transfer is just a click away, this is a virtual reality byte and the hard reality is that a storm in far way Alexandria can stop you from checking your mail.S
