Telecom networks: Resilience or building back better?

RISK is always a fact of life.

- By Prof. Rohan Samarajiva

Modern society made us think risks had been eliminated. But risks have only changed form. We have to understand risks and mitigate them to the extent possible.What happened to the telecom networks is educative. Compared to the 1990s when bombs and strikes were commonplace, the electricity supply appears more reliable now. Back then the telcos invested in backup batteries and generators. After the war’s end, they gradually relaxed. But then came the floods and landslides.

Different risks and bigger consequences. Now the networks are not just for talking. When they fail, even ATMs are affected. Credit cards and QR-based payments will not work. So, the risks are more, not less.

Too many people were unable to use telecom services during and after Ditwah. According to a recent news report, “at the peak of the crisis, over 2,000 telecom sites were impacted, leaving several districts without mobile and data services for two to five days. Network outages were primarily caused by prolonged grid power failures, fibre cut due to floods and landslides, site flooding in low-lying areas, and restricted access that delayed restoration efforts.”

Ditwah was climate change. Predictions were that weather would get extreme: droughts would be longer and floods would be bigger. We had the drought in 2016-2017. Then Ditwah.

Its origin was the unusually warm ocean that caused the cyclone to take up a heavy amount of moisture. For reasons not fully understood, it was also a slow-moving storm. The result was abnormal rainfall of over 300 mm within 24 hours in most of the Central Province, where annual rainfall is around 5,000 mm. The highest recorded was 540.6 mm in Gammaduwa, Matale. One tenth of annual rainfall in a day simply cannot be absorbed. Flooding is inevitable. As are landslides. Much of the talk of deforestation and construction being the causes of landslides is misinformed. Some of the largest landslides started in hill slopes untouched by humans.