APAC Internet down - So Are Some Hosted Web Conferenecing Services

With six of the seven main cables serving Hong Kong, many of us are not going to be able to get much internet access if any to out of country sites. In fact the entire region is experiencing extreme access difficulties as the remaining internet links are overloaded and reserved for premium services. Free, best effort internet service is just that, best effort.

Most of us are still able to get email access through our POP accounts, but web surfing and worse yet, ASP web conferencing services such as WebEx will be heavily impacted. Many of these online ASP hosted services are overseas so scheduling and gaining access will a challenge.

For businesses that rely on the internet for ASP web conferencing services, they can expect poor performance over the next week or so and as much as three weeks according to operators involved in repairing the undersea cables.

There are alternatives such as costly satellite backup links, however, an overall strategy rethink may be in order. Perhaps its time to consider bring web conferencing services in house. This way you not only have a more inherently secure solution, you also can utilize your own network infrastructure. So a combination of LAN, WAN, and open internet access would reduce your risk from any one of these networking components from going down. This better safeguards your critical business service - employee and customer communications.

Web conferencing can take a little as 14k for a voice (VoIP) stream and data can take anywhere from 1-14k depending on what you are doing, i.e. instant messaging, application sharing. So bandwidth is not the issue it once was.

What is more important today is developing a business continuity and technology strategy that is practical under normal circumstances, but offers you the added security to successfully manage and adapt to unforeseen events.