Do you know India is top on the democratic countries list with highest government-imposed internet blackouts? If you count all the countries, then India is second after Myanmar.
In today’s society where a few minutes of internet outage can severely impact productivity, or trigger anxiety for internet users, the Indian government officially shut down the internet 84 times in 2024.
And those of you who think it might be limited to security sensitive regions like Jammu & Kashmir — data says otherwise — these blackouts happened across 16 states/UTs, with Haryana (a non-border state) experiencing 12 such blackouts in 2024 alone. Each of these blackouts lasts several days or more.
If you add local technical outages (telecom provider fiber cuts, ISP downtimes, and public cloud provider disruptions), internet usability is not always guaranteed. Yes, India has some of the lowest costs for mobile data plans, but service quality is still work in progress.
Indian SMEs who can’t afford a dedicated redundant lease-line internet connectivity or multiple backup providers need to rethink their data strategy. Can they afford to completely rely on public cloud services in this environment? What is the business impact when cloud services are not reachable due to an outage?
Preparing a Resilient Data Strategy
SMEs don’t have resources for enterprise-grade redundant routing solutions — they need to keep businesses running at the lowest cost possible. A simple hybrid strategy with local data storage and automated encrypted copies sync'd to the cloud with least human touch is a solution that SMEs can aim for.
While the likes of Apple and Google are introducing satellite connectivity in their mobile devices, regulatory agencies need to introspect on what objectives are achieved by total internet blackouts. Bad actors will always keep finding alternative communication channels — security agencies need to keep pace with intercepting that in the least obstructive way.
Till we get there — prepare for that long blackout when your most important business data is inaccessible because you chose to store it exclusively in someone else’s cloud. Own a physical local vault like Homecloud, and protect your workflows.