Taming Trouble

The story about a villager sitting atop his half-drowned hut calling for help
in flood-hit Bihar has been told umpteen times on various forums and
discussions. At the same time many would agree that this man was fortunate not
only to be holding a handset, and to still be connected while the whole village
was drowing.

Service providers are adding big numbers every month, but there is no denying
the fact that networks continue to remain vulnerable to disasters.
Disasters-natural or manmade-are inevitable. What is needed is the preparedness
to tackle them in order to provide uninterrupted services to consumers. Sadly,
Indian operators are not fully-equipped to maintain quality of services in such
adversities. Even the regulator does not define any clear norms for standards of
quality in times of calamities.

Not too long ago, voice and data traffic to and from several countries in
Asia was disrupted for over a week after three undersea cables-SeaMeWe 4,
SeaMeWe 3 and FLAG-were damaged in the Mediterranean region, between Egypt and
Italy, due to seismic activity. Tata Communications partly owns both SeaMeWe 4
and SeaMeWe 3 (South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe), Bharti Airtel has a
stake in SeaMeWe 4, while FLAG is wholly owned by Reliance Communications.

This is not the lone incident of system failure. Last year a fire in the
basement of the building that houses Bharti Airtels's office and telecom
switches for Mumbai circle brought the operator's subscribers in the region to a
standstill.

A similar situation had risen on July 24, 2005, when the city was flooded and
on July 11, 2006, after the serial bomb blasts in the local trains. What peeved
subscribers the most was the fact that even the call centers were not
responding.

Such discrepancies are a dent to the quality of service that a customer
rightfully deserves to get. Though most operators agree with ITU's
recommendation to share infrastructure in bad times, not all of them seem to be
actually practising it. During the recent damage to the undersea cables, Trai
had to interfere and ask Reliance Communications (RCOM) to submit details of its
back-up plans for such eventualities as it was not the first time time that the
operator had met with such a situation.

“We should not forget that no provider can guarantee a 100% SLA on network services. We can only aspire to remove as many single points of failure in our systems, network, processes and managed services as is possible” Nathan Bell, general manager, Portfolio & Partnerships, BT, APAC	“Our private IP services remained operational even under multiple submarine cable outage scenarios. A service provider needs to have the right network infrastructure to meet customer demands” Yali Liu, director, Asia, network planning, Verizon Business	“During the last two years we have invested $200 mn in upgrading our network across Asia, including the new MSP investments in India, new cable consortia, network expansions including new POP in key markets as well as new solution propositions” Shali Thilakan, director, India Operations, Cable&Wireless

Trai's move came only after RCOM complained to it that Indian long-distance
operators, especially Bharti Airtel, didn't share their infrastructure after its
undersea cable, apart from two others, got damaged due to seismic activity. The
operators alleged that both Bharti and Tata Communications were charging a fee
much higher than market rates to share their infrastructure, but the carriers in
the US, Hong Kong and Singapore had cooperated and shared their infrastructure.

Industry experts say Trai should have not only sought information from
Reliance Communications about its back-up plan, instead it should have taken a
look at each operator's readiness.

Where does the problem lie? Ask this to an operator, it is difficult to get
an answer. The experts say all operators know the solution. They know that
infrastructure sharing is the best way to get over the troubles, but they prefer
not to be bound by any obligation pertaining to sharing of infrastructure.

Satya N Gupta, president ACTO and chief regulatory, advisor BT Global
Services, says, “It is the regulator and the government who have to draft more
stringent guidelines/laws that come in to play when there is a breakdown or
disaster. In the QoS guidelines draft there is no clarity on what must be done
in hours of contingency, and the network collapses due to a natural disaster.”

According to the standard of QoS of basic telephone service and cellular
mobile service regulations notified by the regulatory authority, Trai, in March
“The service provider shall, suo motu, take all remedial action to rectify
shortcomings or deficiencies, if any, detected during the joint drive tests
without waiting for any communications from the Authority. And submit to the
Authority its action plan within thirty days of such drive tests, for remedying
the shortcomings or deficiencies; and its final compliance report within such
time limit as indicated in the action plan or such reduced time limit as may be
indicated by the Authority in response to the action plan of the service
provider referred to in clause, as the case may be.” The latest notification too
does not include what should be done in case of disasters like the one faced by
Reliance Communications.

“The operators want to keep their lips tied on this as it will be against
their interest; they would like to be free of any binding on them to share
infrastructure,” Gupta says.

This sentiment echoed by KP Tiwari, chief international facilities officer,
Tata Communications. Commenting on the government or the regulator's role in
supporting a service provider who is faced by such a disaster he says, “It is in
the interest of service providers to enter into an agreement for restoration
services well in advance in order to avoid crisis situations arising out of
multiple cable failures. As the service providers are mature enough, this
initiative should be driven by the service providers themselves.”

However Nathan Bell, general manager, Portfolio & Partnerships, BT, APAC,
feels the regulator can play a very important role in establishing policies and
ways of working to ensure that in case of a catastrophic network failure, the
focus of restoring services is addressed by the larger network providers as a
team, as opposed to each having to address their problems individually.

When You See Red

Operators say infrastructure sharing can often be the only mechanism
available for network providers to restore services in the shortest time
possible in times of crisis. However many operators tend to address this
independently.

“In the case of BT's infrastructure, the focus is more on network supplier
diversity, removing the dependence on any single bandwidth provider (BT does not
'own' fiber in India), this diversity is crucial to ensuring the stability of a
network. We should also not forget that no provider can guarantee a 100% SLA on
network services (despite what we may be told), we can only aspire to remove as
many single points of failure in our systems, network, processes and managed
services as is possible,” says Nathan Bell of BT.

“Infrastructure sharing is the key while facing challenges during
catastrophic failure as in the case of TIC and I2I.This is an era of co-opetition
where both competition and co-operation between the same set of players can
co-exist. Such arrangements however need to be entered into in advance and not
at the time of crisis,” says KP Tiwari of Tata Communications.

Cables&Wireless sees the key opportunity for infrastructure sharing in the
area of landing stations. “We need to look at a viable model to enable all
service providers to share international landing stations. This will provide an
opportunity for service providers to expand capacity during crisis within a
short period of time,” he says.

Mum on Plans

It is understandable why the operators in India preferred to keep silent
when VOICE&DATA tried to learn about the preparations to handle breakdowns.
Disaster management requires intensive planning and high-level of cooperation
between operators which is not in place.

Meanwhile, some service providers were ready to talk only on specific things.
Talking about its ownership of and presence in multiple cable systems across the
world coupled with its ability to distribute all types of traffic among various
cable systems serves as a natural back-up in case of disruption in services,
Tata Communications says the company also entered into mutual restoration
agreements with cable systems where it is a co-owner of SMW-3 and SMW-4 as well
as with cable systems where it is not a co-owner as in the case of the Tata
Indicom cable and i2i. These restoration agreements are engineered in auto-mode
which ensures that in the event of a disruption in traffic in one cable system,
traffic is automatically diverted to the other working cable system.

The operator said the company's ownership of the trans-continental Tata
Global Network across the globe enables Tata Communications to restore traffic
to the USA in case of failure of a cable either in the east or west of India.
For instance, during the triple cable cuts in December 2008,normal connectivity
to customers was restored in India, the Middle East and South East Asia within a
day, via the Pacific route east of India.

An Airtel spokesperson says that while planning its network expansions it has
always taken into account natural disasters which may result in network
disruptions. Its corporate customers demand customized solutions that support
their critical business applications across the globe. Keeping this in mind, the
operator has laid emphasis on our infrastructure backbone and invested more than
Rs 1,500 crore in the last two years on nine diverse cables routes enabling the
service provider to have a robust and diverse communications networks.

“We are fully aware of its role in connecting India to the world and have
taken every step to ensure that we keep providing seamless global connectivity
to our customers,” says Vineet A Kumar of Reliance Globalcom.

BT claims its network, both in and out of India, has built-in resiliency and
redundancy to ensure any network failure can be minimized to the immediate point
of service disruption. The company says it achieves this by designing and
managing an MPLS platform with physically diverse core nodes in all major
cities, two different hardware platforms for the network, different telecom
providers to deliver bandwidth requirements, diverse landing stations and
sub-sea cable systems. In a stable network environment these design principles
are often regarded as excessive, however, with cable failures and earthquakes
impacting sub-sea assets, the continued operation of customers' communications
platform by any means possible become the highest priority, it is these
instances we need to remember when debating the need for back-up solutions.

Verizon Business' global network follows strict design guidelines. “We have
multiple layers of diversity built-in to ensure availability. This is not just
in India but globally. We have diverse nodes and undersea cable routes that
backup each other as part of our standard network design. Our private IP
services remained operational even under multiple submarine cable outage
scenarios. A service provider needs to have the right network infrastructure to
meet customer demands,” says Yali Liu, director, Asia, network planning, Verizon
Business.

Cable&Wireless has invested into a fully meshed Core Director transmission
network globally. This network is a self-healing global network, comprising more
than sixty meshed Ciena core directors, which seamlessly reroute traffic during
disasters such as the recent cable breaks.

“During the last two years we have invested $200 mn in upgrading our network
across Asia, including the new Multi-Service Platform (MSP) investments in
India, new cable consortia, network expansions including new points-of-presence
in key markets as well as new solutions propositions,” Shali Thilakan, director,
India Operations, Cable&Wireless.

Troubleshooting

The key cable gateways out of India are from Mumbai, Chennai and Kochi only.
A large natural disaster along the coastline of India could create a huge impact
on the capability of service providers to deliver a non-degraded service.

Should a natural disaster occur, the focus should be on helping the service
provider to build capacity via available paths and for these providers to share
capacity with other telecom companies. This would only be possible if the
disaster is prolonged and the effort to set-up cross connections can happen in a
short time period. This takes us back to the previous point that there should be
sharing of landing station access. In this case the cross connection/backhaul
would be within the building and can be done fairly quickly.

The other option is for the government to encourage service providers to lay
international cables and better connect the India subcontinent with Asia, Europe
and USA. There are many new cables expected between India, Europe and the rest
of Asia which will help reduce the risk.

But ultimately the one-stop solution lies within the hands of governing
bodies. They can best help by not merely laying out guidelines or
recommendations, but setting up stringent regulations that protect the customer
interest even in the times of disasters.

Heena Jhingan

heenaj@cybermedia.co.in