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Afghanistan/South Asia
Businesses lose millions in Internet breakdown
2005-07-02
Anybody starting to wonder if this is an experiment?
Least you got your Daily Times fix.
LAHORE: The ongoing countrywide Internet blackout has dealt a severe blow to the city’s IT economy, with major broadband operators, Internet service providers (ISPs) and net cafes in Lahore, which has some 300,000 Internet users, losing millions of rupees. Major banking and aviation houses, especially those whose servers are abroad, are struggling to manage customer services. “For the last few days we have only been able to manage emergency services like card blockades, but since our system is not working properly our international communication operations have been hit,” said Imran Ahmed, a supervisor at Standard Chartered Bank. “But our IT staff has managed to create a back-up from Dubai and Singapore and now the situation has improved.”

Nauman Ahmed works with Microsoft in Dubai. “It was essential for me to get in touch with my office through the net, but when I tried today (Friday) it took 42 minutes to open the portal,” said a frustrated Nauman. The economic and credibility losses are also hitting airlines. “Since we have introduced an e-ticketing network where a customer can book and confirm seats online and our server is based in the US, we were the most affected from the aviation industry,” said Tariq Ejaz, traffic officer at the private airline AirBlue. “The whole staff stays till late at night to switch ticketing operations to manual and the next day we dish out manual tickets to our customers. It’s a pathetic situation to say the least and though it is gradually improving because PTCL is giving priority to airlines in its back-up systems, it is still a big mess,” said Ejaz.

Broadband operators like World Call and WOL, who buy bandwidth from PTCL, have been particularly badly hit. “The crisis has hit us terribly. We are working on less than 50 percent of the bandwidth that we paid PTCL for and our consumers are suffering,” said Amir Gulzar, WorldCall chief technology officer. The local multimedia giant has around 15,000 domestic consumers. “Our losses will not be less than US$30,000 for these five days alone,” said Gulzar. There are at least five other major bandwidth players in the city like WOL, NetSol and PakNet. “Our ISP operations have also been badly hit. We will review the losses once this crisis ends and normal service resumes,” said Gulzar. Industry experts called on PTCL to cover their losses. “We hope PTCL will refund the money for bandwidth which could not be used,” said Murad Saleem, an IT expert and former vice-president of WoL.

The thousands of cyber cafes dotted across the city are considering shutting down their businesses until the Internet is back to normal. “There is no use of me coming here and opening the shop to no customers. I use to earn Rs 700-1000 daily from the six booths I have, but for the last few days I have been spending from my own pocket to stay open,” said Kashif Saleem, the owner of a net café in Islampura. PTCL has categorised the service supply from it satellite back-up system in favour of airlines, banks, airports and call centres, meaning major operators like PIA and stock exchanges are running relatively smoothly. “We haven’t had any problems during these days. We have our own back-up system linked to the PTCL back-up,” said Athar Ali, PIA public relations officer.
Posted by:Fred

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