Even as India faces severe Internet connectivity problems following the damage to two undersea cables in the Mediterranean Sea, companies in the information technology sector, including business process outsourcing units, claim that there has not been any major disruption in their services.

BPOs in Bangalore, which rely heavily on Internet services, say that there has been a 'slowdown' but they 'have been able to tide over the crisis' by using 'backup or alternate lines.' They said they would have to rely on these lines through the satellite for at least another two weeks as it would take that long to repair the damage.

Contrary to this, bosses at BPOs claim that their units managed to sail through the crisis without any problem. BPOs in Bangalore claim that the situation is under control at the moment.

They say that they are working closely with their Internet service providers. ISPs say that services had been disrupted primarily due to a delay in the switch-over delay.

The Internet Service Providers' Association said that there has been a 60 per cent cut in bandwidth due to which there has been a slowdown.

Pradeep Narayanan, chief delivery officer, 24/7 Customer, said: "Although there is a marginally slower access to Internet, this has not disrupted or affected our operations. Our IT team is working closely with our service providers to ensure that the operations continue to function, seamlessly."

However, employees at some of these BPOs said that outbound calls were severely hit for two hours on Wednesday and voice quality was poor, but after the switch-over was done to the backup lines the problem was fixed. The lines still remain slow, they asserted.

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