We often think of the internet as something invisible in the air. But yesterday, tens of millions of users in India were reminded that the internet is built on physical cables, routers, and servers that can break. On Feb. 26, Reliance Jio, the country’s biggest telecom operator, experienced a major service failure that left large parts of Delhi, Mumbai, and West Bengal without internet.
The Anatomy of a Blackout
In the early hours, daybreak reports started pouring. No, it was not just a slow connection; it was “No Service” all the way. For those out of the loop, Jio is more than a phone carrier — it is also the backbone of India’s digital economy. From street vendors who accept UPI payments to remote employees logging into Zoom, the network is the lifeblood for everyday commerce. When that oxygen is severed, suffocation happens straight away.
What really happens during such an outage? Jio hasn’t specified the exact cause, but failures of this scale are usually due to either a physical disconnection or a routing misconfiguration. ‘Fiber cuts’—damaged cables from construction or vandalism—can disconnect cities. However, this outage affected multiple regions, leading experts to suspect a routing error.
The Routing Nightmare
Think of the internet like a network of highways. Routers act as traffic controllers. If a central software update malfunctions or a settings file becomes corrupted, the routers might lose track of routes. They either stop directing traffic or misdirect it, causing many users to lose connection and see errors like ‘Not Registered on Network.’
The Human Cost of Downtime
This isn’t just about not scrolling Instagram. An outage in a mobile-first economy stops economic activity. Delivery drivers couldn’t get orders. Cabs couldn’t be booked. Frustration showed online as users toggled Airplane Mode, hoping to connect to towers that weren’t responding.
This incident clearly shows how dependent we are on a single network. When one system fails, many things stop working. As services slowly return, attention now shifts to preventing future outages in a society that relies on staying connected.
