First step to Telecommunications Resilience is Network Visibility

By Gaurav Mohan, VP, SAARC & Middle East, NETSCOUT

Natural disasters are becoming more frequent and severe, as evidenced by the recent earthquakes in Syria and Turkey. Telecommunications infrastructure around the world is being put to the test as a result of these catastrophes and the rapidly expanding population. This means that carriers and internet service providers (ISPs) are under pressure to improve network visibility.

Everyone affected by a catastrophe, including responders, citizens, and infrastructure teams, relies on mobile connectivity before, during, and after the occurrence of the disaster. 72% of first responders, according to Verizon’s 2021 Frontline Public Safety Communications Survey, claimed that their smartphone was their most crucial piece of equipment. Increased reliance on networks from work-from-home and hybrid workforces makes ensuring the stability of telecommunications during natural disasters even more challenging.

Integrating observability into telecommunications systems is essential for ensuring service in both good and bad times. For carriers and ISPs, this means leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to map out network complexity and identify blind spots. Observability is essential for determining the cause of congestion and service degradation and quantifying the customer experience, which can be used to develop disaster response and business continuity plans to ensure uptime.

Gaining the observability required to ensure telecommunications networks are available when needed during a crisis requires a thorough understanding of the communications between service, infrastructure, and characteristics, regardless of data location. A solid data foundation and deep packet-level visibility are critical in building an automated intelligence layer that provides real-time visibility throughout the entire infrastructure.

By incorporating increased observability into systems, carriers, and ISPs may respond to outages and disturbances to crucial telecommunications networks during a natural catastrophe more swiftly, which can be the difference between life and death in many circumstances.