The stimulus for this post was the earthquake that happened on Tuesday of this week off the coast of Taiwan. According to the BBC the quake destroyed fibre optic cables under the sea and disrupted telephone and Internet links in China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. By Thursday services were returning to normal as services were re-routed along other routes and cables, including renting capacity from the private sector, but there were still major disruptions.
The impressive thing about this story is the ability of the world communications network to survive a massive disruption. But the lesson is that we must accept that periodically, in the future, the Internet will go down, either for natural reasons, accidents, or malicious damage. Life without the Internet is hard to imagine these days, in a few years it will be even more central to everything we do. For many companies no Internet means no access to files, no email, and no telephones – so how would they work?
For quant market research a week without the Internet would mean little fieldwork, limited access to files, no email, limited phone calls (probably mostly mobile) and difficulty in booking travel, accommodation, and no blogging or WOM.
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