Do you know India is top on the democratic countries list with highest govt imposed internet blackouts. If you count all the countries then India is second after Myanmar.
In today’s society where few minutes of internet outage can severely impact productivity, trigger panic among social media addicts (pun intended) Indian govt officially shutdown internet 84 times in 2024.
And those of you who think it might be limited to security sensitive regions like J&K – data says otherwise – these blackouts happened across 16 states/UTs with Haryana (non border state) experiencing 12 such blackouts in 2024 alone. Each of these blackout lasts several days or more.
If you add local technical outages (telecom provider, ISP and cloud provider) internet usability is not something to boast of in India. Yes India has lowest cost of mobile data plans but service quality is still work in progress.
India SMEs who can’t afford a dedicated Internet connectivity or multiple providers need to think of their data strategy – can they afford to completely rely on cloud services in this environment? What is the business impact when cloud services are not reachable (due to any reason)?
SMEs don’t have resources for redundant solutions – they need to keep business running at the lowest cost possible. A simple hybrid strategy with local data storage and encrypted copies to cloud all done automatically with least human touch is a solution that SMEs can aim for,
While likes of Apple, Google are introducing satellite connectivity in their devices – Indian govt need to introspect on what objectives are achieved by Internet blackouts? Tech will always be a step ahead of regulations and bad actors will keep finding ways of communication – security agencies need to keep pace with intercepting that in the least obstructive way. Till we get there – prepare for that long blackout when you most important data is inaccessible because you choose to store it in someone’s cloud.
