Verizon Outage: Brief But The Impact is Clear

Verizon, a U.S.-based telecommunication company, issued an apology in response to yesterday’s connectivity hiccup. The carefully crafted apology by the company President Joe Russo, that must have put the company’s PR team to work, reads like a confession; A confession that the entire human connectivity hinges on an invisible thread prone to be broken at any given time; A confession that modern man has built a civilization that a simple software glitch can paralyze. 

Sleight of Hand Strategy

The apology also stated that the amount of affected customers is an “isolated number”. Remember this isolated number still amounted to more than millions. This means the PR team really worked hard to employ linguistic tactics to minimize the magnitude of damage when you mention millions of users as “Isolated Number”. This sleight of hand strategy shows how they’re framing a digital disaster as minor inconvenience instead of an infrastructure failure. 

Forever of Few Hours

One may ask what makes such a disruption news worthy? The answer is, modern communication disruptions aren’t only about delayed texts or missed calls, they’re failed lifelines and major setbacks in someone’s entire working ecosystem. Ranging from remote work calls to health monitoring devices, the entire slice of our daily lives hinges on an uninterrupted connectivity.  

The Economics

The economic imperative of such a disruption is stark as well. The apology by the President might acknowledge the problem with a candor but the overreaching capital loss is not really a small number. As per recent studies, 1 hour of network downtime cost approximately $459 million in lost economic activity, amounting a 24 hour outage to around $11 billion in sectors like commerce and communication. 

Specifically, if the sector under discussion, Telecom industry is examined; research shows that a telecom company loses $300,000 during an hour of network outage. Also, a single, poorly managed day of outage can reprieve the company of its 15%-25% consumer base. 

Both Verizon’s outage and the following apology should serve as a reminder. Former for the fact that in this age of “Always On” technological habitats, uninterrupted connectivity is neither a luxury nor an achievement by the Tech firms, rather  bare minimum service, fulfilling a necessity they promised to fulfill, and Latter for how giant corporations twist their words to minimize the impact of a disaster that hit millions of user base out of thin air.