India needs a plan for telecom resilience. Telecom networks in Goa, Mumbai and West Bengal have faced major issues in the wake of power cuts and natural disasters. There may be more power cuts, and there definitely will be more natural disasters. Along the coasts, cities like Chennai, Kochi and Mumbai lay vulnerable to storms that have had time to brew and intensify before making landfall, and here, internet infrastructure is at risk. Unlike buildings, which are regulated to withstand earthquakes, wired and wireless internet have frequently fallen in the wake of calamity. It's hard to overstate just how urgent keeping telecom networks up is. Staying connected to cellular networks and the internet has been essential, and one of the key ways in which society has been able to pull through COVID-19 lockdowns. And yet, in spite of this importance, climate and power supply issues, in addition to fibre cuts, remain a massive threat to telecom resilience as internet and telecom companies scale and grow their networks. Robust networks are important now, not in the future Cyclone Amphan in May devastated cellular and wired broadband networks alike. In Mumbai last week, an unexpected power cut knocked mobile towers without enough power backup offline for hours, and that too in the countrys financial capital. On Thursday, the same thing happened in Panaji, knocking several Vodafone–Idea users offline in the Goan capital due to flooding in a datacentre over 400 kilometres away in Pune. In 2015, many parts of Chennai didn't have…
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