Slow internet: Another major under sea disturbance caused by cyclone Vardah in Chennai

As Cyclonic storm ‘Vardah’ weakens into a well-marked low pressure after creating havoc and devastating the state of Tamil Nadu, one of the major impacts which this calamity is caused is: the slow internet.

Vardah has widely affected the coverage and connectivity of internet in parts of the country as service providers have said that cyclone Vardah has damaged undersea digital cables and it will take some time to bring back things back on track.

Country’s leading service provider Airtel send out a message to its customers which read, “Dear Customer, the cyclone in Chennai has impacted one of our undersea network cables which may affect your internet speeds. We deeply regret the inconvenience. Our engineers are working to resolve the issue and services will be normalised shortly.”

Vodafone also released which said, “"We are experiencing challenges in fiber media backbone in Chennai due to this phenomenon and as a result internet traffic moving via Trans-Pacific Route may get impacted. This may result in intermittent degradation of services on our Internet Links."

A few bank websites such as the likes of Corporation Bank faced error while completing transactions for about 4 hours on Tuesday morning. While the Air India website failed to process a Master Card payment.

Experts have stated that India has two major international internet gateways- a key point from where the data inflow and outflow is managed- one in Chennai and the other in Mumbai. It seems Vardha has hit the Chennai gateway by disturbing the optic fibre cables under the sea.

A huge amount of international data is transmitted in the form of optical fibre cables undersea with thousands of miles long cables are installed undersea. While the optical fibre cables are subject to damage from any disturbance taking place under the sea or the movement of a ship, trawler or any natural disaster like underwater quake or cyclone can affect the working of the internet.