Noted Pakistani and Pakistani-American businessmen have said that they had been operating almost normally despite the reported damage caused in the SEA-ME-WE-3 fibre optic internet cable on Monday at the floor of the Arabian Sea, some 50km south of Karachi.
However, this has been a major blow to the IT industries both in Pakistan and India. Some better-funded Indian call centres had switched over to satellite backup systems, where available, but that not all centres had invested in such connections.
While in Pakistan, Pak Telecom Company Ltd (PTCL), Pakistan's major backbone provider scrambled to provide immediate satellite backup systems on priority to major Business Process Outsourcers and International Call Centres.
Damage to the undersea telecommunications initially disrupted most of Pakistan's international telephone and internet connections but the outage spread to India, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Djibouti when repairs started.
According to reports by international wire agencies, disruptions are anticipated to last for two weeks.
Pervaiz Lodhie, President and CEO Ledtronics Inc Los Angeles, who outsources its complete MIS, BPO and Call Centre support to NBA Computers Karachi, said that aside from a slight glitch felt on Monday in the services being outsourced to Pakistan, the business was as usual. "We have not experienced any problems or service degradation from working with NBA Computers at Karachi".
Babar Jhumra, Managing Partner NBA Computers International Call Centre and BPO in Karachi, said that call centre operators in Pakistan had been told that service levels on SMW-3 could be restored as early as possible. He also said that he was satisfied with PTCL's performance in providing immediate sat-link, although officials for the Internet Service Provider Association of Pakistan (ISPAK) had said that repairs might not be completed until Friday.
SMW-3 provides Pakistan with its sole high-speed cable access. All call centres in Pakistan serving international customers have been without their usual level of telecommunications service since Monday.
Government of Pakistan has provided satellite backup systems to international call centres in the country at no charge in order to make them more internationally competitive, and all international call centres in Pakistan are reportedly operating on satellite backup connections now.
Nasser Jhumra, CTO and Partner NBA Computers based in Los Angeles added that vital satellite backup services had kept the call centre industry in Pakistan functioning, and degraded line quality was minimal.
IT firms that do not qualify as pure international call centre operators and have not been allowed independent access to satellite backup capacity in Pakistan have reportedly been particularly hard hit.
Additional two new satellite connections have been reportedly added to the existing three sat-links providing Pakistan with 80percent of in international bandwidth needed by the International Call Centre and BPO industry, which is also enough to support about 1,500+ voice lines using conventional technology.
According to ISPAK, there are over 50 ISPs in Pakistan, serving more than 10 million internet users who have only been able to send and receive emails but not to surf the internet.
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