Most people may not be aware of just how ‘well connected’ Pakistan is. There are presently three submarine fiber cables coming into Karachi which makes us quite secure internationally. From Karachi to Peshawar, there are four separate domestic nationwide fiber networks. This makes our fiber network redundant, secure and reliable according to any international standard you compare us with.
Nayatel’s network constitutes of a core optical fiber ring spanning 100 km across Islamabad and Rawalpindi along with other hundreds of kilometers of fiber arteries and small rings in all sectors of Islamabad and business districts of Rawalpindi. “The core ring is fully redundant and self healing. This means that if the fiber is damaged from any side, the traffic will automatically shift to an alternate route within the fraction of a second,” starts of Wahaj Us Siraj, CEO of Nayatel, a subsidiary of Micronet Broadband.
The company began working towards realizing the concept of FTTU (Fiber To The User) as early as 2004. “We began laying out the fiber in 2005 and it took us two years to build this network to what it is now.” The company opened up its services to the public in July of 2007. And the timing worked out quite perfectly for the companies that run on high speed internet. When the September 20th Marriott hotel bomb blast shook the Evacuee Trust Complex, one of the two Software Technology Parks in Islamabad, Nayatel played a critical role in having the necessary infrastructure in place which enabled companies running critical offshore operations to make their quick rebound.
“After studying and visiting the FTTU models implemented in Tokyo and Seoul, we decided to go ahead with Passive Optical Based Network (PON) because of its reliability and robustness. We chose Alcatel’s PON equipment and voice soft switch, Cisco’s core switches, Scientific Atlanta’s video head, and passive fiber parts from Corning and ADC.” The growth and market response has been as the Nayatel team predicted.
Right now, the company offers broadband internet, point-to-point Metro Data links, residential and corporate telephony services along with cable TV services to our customers. The triple play project in fact, resembles what Verizon has deployed across much of the US.
”What we have is a brand new, well designed, installed network. Its reliability is 99.9% and speed is not an issue over fiber. We’ve got customers that are working at speeds ranging from 512Kbps to as high as 100Mbps,” explains Wahaj.
Being proactive
When the blast occurred, Nayatel deployed its proactive strategy and began contacting companies. “We offered emergency help to shift their accounts to any other location in Islamabad or Rawalpindi on our fiber network. The blast occurred on Saturday night and we had already shifted several customers by Sunday. A few of the physical offices had shifted by the time it was Monday morning in the West and we got reports that US customers were pleasantly surprised to see their back offices up and running within a day.”
The obvious challenge for the companies was relocation. There were as many as 3,000 employees working at the ETC building where some companies had as many as 500 people each. They were simply unable to relocate to a premises large enough to accommodate everyone in one place. Instead, they hired multiple locations in houses or commercial buildings and accommodated batches of employees in each location. This posed another challenge to Nayatel, who was trying to set up the companies’ communication infrastructure.
“The companies required internet backbone connectivity, point-to-point data links and telephone connections, whether PRI or normal. When one company spanned across multiple sites, each of the sites needed to be connected to one another seamlessly so as to make them appear on a single local area network to outside world. This was achieved by connecting all their offices across our fiber network with each other.”
The task was not an easy one by any standards and Nayatel’s team of engineers and support staff rose to the challenge. The majority of the companies that were affected ran managed services operations in Pakistan for customers based out of North America. Services cannot afford any downtime. There is too much competition that Pakistani service-oriented companies face in order to give up. For most of the companies there was always a backup plan in place. After all, the stakes are high when it comes to BPO. For a software technology park that generates an estimated Pak Rs.350-400 million revenue on a monthly basis, you can’t afford not to have a Plan B in place.
Thanks for progressive and robust infrastructure in place, most of the companies that managed the critical services for customers based out of the US, didn’t have any downtime. They were up and running for their North American customers on Monday keeping business as usual.
Looking Ahead
Data centers for disaster recovery management needs to be build by the operators in major cities as this requirement has now become most pressing then ever. These data centers would be connected with redundant fiber backbones capable of real time back of data of companies from their parent location. ISPs and telecom companies can play a major role in putting up this infrastructure.
“A robust telecom network with disaster recovery facilities enhances confidence of offshore customers. The display of this capability was unique and will go a long way in demonstrating the reliability of Pakistan’s telecom network in event of any disaster.”
Long term planning and the ability to immediately deploy flexible architecture to suit an organization’s needs during a crisis – these are signs of a mature service provider that signifies a maturing economy. Organizations that implement technology that will make a significant long term impact are the organizations that make the difference.
In a population of more than 160 million people, Nayatel was one company that had the right product deployed at the right time which will help restore more faith into Pakistan’s ability to manage offshore and outsourcing business than ever before.
