Around twenty BPO companies in India switched to back-up routes and circuits to serve their overseas clients, after three undersea cables damaged in the Mediterranean disrupted internet and communication links between Europe, West Asia and parts of Asia. However, smaller call centres which largely run operations on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) are believed to have been hit. India is among the countries that have been badly affected by the undersea cable cuts that occurred on Sea Me We 4, Sea Me We3, and FLAG.

“The SMW4 carries lot internet and voice traffic from India. We also have circuits on SMW4, but we were not impacted as we have a comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity policy. We have redundancy both on trans-Atlantic as also the trans-Pacific routes, and so there was no impact on our customers,” said Mr Ranjit Narasimhan, President and CEO, HCL BPO.

Industry officials said the smaller BPOs that do not have redundancies built-in are likely to have been severely hit. “Larger companies have dedicated point-to-point circuits through IPLCs, and they are immediately moved to the spare capacity on other cables. Moreover, the large companies also have their own set of back up through alternate routes,” sources said. (more…)