Why Wireless Isn’t

By Guy Bunker | April 17, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Even wireless networks depend on a wire of some kind, it might not be attached to your handset or computer, but somewhere along the communication chain there is a wire… and if that wire is severed… well… then there will be an outage. In a storyfrom California earlier this week, sabotage was blamed for the severing of fibre optic cables which resulted in outages for mobile phones, landlines and Internet services. So what – well, companies need to be prepared for every eventuality in their disaster recovery / business continuity planning (DR/BC) and nowadays that has to include communications.

Disasters don’t have to be on-site to effect you and in the case of communication cables can be a relatively long way away and still have an effect. By asking questions to your service provider(s) you will be able to plan for an outage. Could you re-route the main switchboard through a different service, how about email? In the case of your datacentre, is it possible to have multiple Internet service providers, with different access points and cables?

IT is now a critical part of operational risk and as such the scenarios and planning around potential disaster needs to be re-examined. While this was a case of sabotage, more often than not it is a careless contractor digging up the road who severs cables… its better to be prepared for such an occurance than not…

Bookmark It