Sunday, September 27, 2009

How The Telcos Fared During the Disaster

Natural (and man-made) disasters show the resiliency of telco networks. During good times, they always brag on how redundant their links are, or how their fiber rings can automatically re-route traffic in cases of major fiber cuts. But come major disasters and you see the true nature of their preparedness. So how did they do during Typhoon Ondoy?

Our BayanDSL conked out by Sept 26 mid-afternoon. This was during the height of Ondoy when the flood water was rising. The Bayan Wireless Landline (BWL) service was pretty stable though. So even though there is a preference for wired connections when it comes to data, wireless is still less prone to downtime. The interconnection with other telcos got pretty bad though. But this was understandable due to the unusually high number of calls people are trying to make to reach their relatives.

For mobile, Globe Handyphone signal was very spotty. Globe landline was totally dead in most (if not all) of Marikina. Smart held up pretty well. Signal was very consistent and I did not experience much problem calling other Smart numbers.

Mozcom's core data network did not encounter outages. But the "last-mile" link to several of our customers were affected mostly due to loss of power in the telco's outside-plant facilities.

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