Internet - undersea cable outage

Tata Communications Global Internet Service Maintains Connectivity During Triple Cable Cuts

Tata Communications maintained Internet connectivity to its customers in India, Middle East, and South East Asia and restored normal connectivity to its customers in these regions on December 20, 2008, within a day of the triple cable cuts of December 19, 2008.

Three major undersea cables (SMW3, SMW4, and FLAG) were damaged in the Mediterranean, disrupting Internet and communication services in parts of Asia, India and the Middle East. During this triple cable cut, Tata Communications' global Internet backbone maintained full connectivity and remained completely operational. Although there was induced latency in some routes, the activation of a diverted path towards North America and Europe via East Asia, Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic routes enabled and contributed to the service continuity and minimal service interruption.

Tata Communications fully completed its disaster recovery plan for South Asia, India and Middle East & North Africa regions within 24 hours leveraging its global, diverse submarine cable and IP network, at which point Tata Communications started implementing incremental bandwidth to the severely impacted regions.

"Tata Communications' extensive Global Internet backbone has diverse eastward and westward paths which enable us to maintain services when incidents like this one occur," said Radwan Moussalli, Managing Director, Middle East & North Africa, Tata Communications. "We are proud of our global operations and engineering team that worked round the clock to execute a speedy and successful recovery plan to ensure business continuity for our Internet customers."