Like electricity, telecommunication is playing a very essential role in the life of the modern man. Who lives in the modern society who do not have access to a telephone, mobile phone or internet? The modern man need not go out of the bound of its home to be able to do business, shopping, banking, booking, etc. This does not include the dependence of industry, businesses, government or power sector on telecommunication.
This dependence on the modern man on telecommunication is creating a central point of weakness in modern society – the telecommunication backbone. Governments are investing hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade the telecommunication backbone to cope up with the advancement in technology. This point of weakness however is should also be address as there are incidents that already happened stopping the flow of normal businesses due to failure of telecommunication backbone.
In mid-July 2008, the construction of the water system in Goldcoast, Queensland hitting a fibre optic telecommunication backbone paralyzed the telephone, mobile phone, banking system, etc in Southeast Queensland for almost a day. Yesterday, almost 6,000 passengers of the Virgin Airlines in Melbourne, Victoria were stranded due to cancellation of about 48 flights. This was due to the failure of a Telstra telecommunication backbone affecting the airlines checkin system.
This weakness of the telecommunication system together with the supply of electricity is very critical in modern society as any group or individual who has undesirable motives will be able to attack these facilities and cripple any country or government even without the use of arms.
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