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U.S. Blackout Cut Off Many Internet Users - Report

11/25/2003

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The Web worked fairly well in the Blackout of 2003, but don't disconnect your telephone service just yet, advises a new report on communications infrastructure.

The August blackout that hit the United States and Canada didn't knock out the major pathways of the World Wide Web, but it did cut Internet connectivity for banks, hospitals and thousands of other businesses. That shows the global network needs more investment before replacing the telephone system as the primary communications infrastructure, concludes a recent study from Hanover, New Hampshire-based Renesys, a provider of Internet monitoring services.

The largest Internet backbone networks, the major arteries of data traffic worldwide, were apparently unaffected by the blackout. However, thousands of significant networks and millions of Internet users were offline for hours or days, according to the report, titled "Impact of the 2003 Blackouts on Internet Communications."

"Banks, investment funds, business services, manufacturers, hospitals, educational institutions, Internet service providers, and federal and state government units were among the affected organizations," said the report.

The scale and duration of the Internet connectivity outages indicate that the Internet is not ready to become the main communications infrastructure in the United States without additional investment in higher-quality interconnection and backup power, the report concluded.

The blackout affected Internet connectivity at more than 9,700 customer networks belonging to more than 3,500 businesses and organizations, according to the report.

Of the more than 3,000 networks that suffered "abnormal connectivity," more than 2,000 suffered outages longer than four hours and more than 1,400 lost connectivity for 12 hours or more, including some for up to 48 hours, the report said.

Last week, U.S. and Canadian investigators issued a report that concluded that the outage began when overgrown trees shorted out three major transmission lines owned by Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corp.

The Aug. 14 blackout was the largest in U.S. history and resulted in billions of dollars in damage, according to federal estimates. It closed airports and subways, shut manufacturing plants and left 50 million people in the dark in the northeastern United States and Canada.

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