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On the benefits of redundant telecoms in Pakistan

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Sequence of events:

  1. Benazir Bhutto assassinated.
  2. Pakistan goes postal.
  3. Telecoms/internet disrupted.

Although Masud’s post isn’t clear about what specifically brought the internet went down, or how they brought it back up again, he does have a good point about why these things happen, and what urban planners / architects / anybody who’s listening might do about it:

PTCL Telephone exchanges stand out among buildings. Banks, Telephone Exchanges, Shops and the like are the first target of an unruly mob. TWA1 or other small operators are not that evident. No one knows the whereabout of their landing stations,Points-of-Presence etc. So, during rioting, they do not make identifiable targets.

So a) small is beautiful as far as internet providers are concerned, and b) make sure you have redundant connectivity.  I’m glad that the internet was back on after 30-odd hours, but I’m sure that it won’t be the last time this happens in Pakistan.

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Written by Paul Currion

December 31st, 2007 at 8:55 am

Posted in Emergency Telecommunications,Pakistan

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5 Responses to 'On the benefits of redundant telecoms in Pakistan'

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  1. John Robb from Global Guerrillas makes a similar point about systems disruption:

    http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/13425/24596336

    Tom Longley

    31 Dec 07 at 11:11

  2. Paul: The disruption in telecom was created when a mob torched the equipment inside a telephone exchange situated in Sukkur (Sindh Province). This affected the National SDH ring that was carrying voice and data traffic between Punjab (Lahore, Islamabad) and Sindh (Karachi). The Rangers were called in to evacuate the exchange. The engineers did a wonderful job to bring everything back online in less than 40 hours!. The alternate traffic path was also down because of a mob fiber cut near Hyderabad (in Sindh Province). Benazir Bhutto belonged to Sindh … hence the maximum unrest there. Cheers!

    Masud

    10 Jan 08 at 20:42

  3. Thanks for giving us the detail, Masud. 40 minutes is a pretty impressive response time! Do you know if the government and companies involved have any plans to make the infrastructure more resilient?

    Paul Currion

    11 Jan 08 at 16:17

  4. There are at least four national backbone providers in Pakistan: Wateen, Multinet, Mobilink and PTCL, each with resilient fiber-optic rings from Peshawar to Karachi. Operators other than PTCL have just entered the market and the bulk of national circuits is still with PTCL. However, with passage of time, this is bound to change and network designers would engage alternate carriers to ensure greater uptime. During Rioting, Engineers have to risk life to restore services and the downtime I talked was 40 hours not 40 minutes :-) . Cheers!

    Masud

    13 Jan 08 at 9:39

  5. 40 hours is a less impressive response time, and I should read more carefully…

    More redundancy is the key to resilience, and hopefully less injured engineers!

    Paul Currion

    14 Jan 08 at 10:31

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