Indian Outsourcing Hit Hard
By Christopher Nickson
January 01, 2008
The undersea communications cable break in the Mediterranean has had a huge effect on those Indian call centers.
Outsourcing has become a major bone of contention in a number of countries. You call for help or tech support and find yourself talking to someone in India. Well, for the moment your probably won’t.
The undersea communications break that occurred near Egypt on Wednesday is having major repercussions. Not only has it disrupted Internet access to much of the Middle East and India, but the associated phone problems have hurt the call center business in India.
According to the BBC, about 50% of India’s bandwidth is down, and when you consider that outsourced business in the country, serving IT and other businesses, is worth $48 billion, that’s a major blow.
"The companies that serve the US east coast and the UK are worst affected," Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Providers' Association of India, told AP. "The delay is very bad in some cases. They have to arrange back-up plans or they have to accept the poor quality for the time being until the fibre is restored."
It could take up to a week for full service to be restored, experts say.