So… the day before Oman National Day I launched my blog. About an hour later the internet died! At first I thought it was just my own personal connection that was the problem, but it soon became apparent that the entire country was affected. What are the chances that my site would be born on the same day that the vehicle for it’s transmission would die?! It seems that the whole of Omantel went down and certainly here in Salalah I was without internet, mobile or landline reception for a period of around 9 hours. Wow! How is it possible for the entire communications infrastructure of a country to collapse like that? It was really quite a disconcerting feeling to realise that I suddenly had no means to communicate with anyone. A less initially obvious impact was the downing of the banking system. ATM machines didn’t work and people couldn’t make card payments. It’s scary just how reliant we actually are on these technologies to work. To find yourself in a situation where you can’t get in contact with anyone or buy anything you might need, unless you happen to have a stash of cash, is pretty unpleasant. Fortunately, I didn’t have anything majorly important I needed to do that day, but how on earth did businesses cope with the outage? When you can’t make or receive calls or exchange emails or make financial transactions, business pretty much grinds to a halt. It seems crazy that it’s possible for that to happen and for such a long period of time. Surely there should be some kind of contingency plan? I remember the days, helping out in my dad’s shop, when we still used to take manual card payments – making imprints of the cards in triplicate onto carbon paper. We have advanced so much yet it seems we are also more vulnerable than ever. I have heard that even calls to the emergency 9999 number did not work. I don’t know if that’s true or not but if it is, then that’s truly frightening that people in need could have been left without access to essential services.
My husband is on the ooredoo network and he fortunately retained his phone signal throughout. I’m sure ooredoo must have a lot of new users as a result of this outage as I doubt I was alone in going straight out to buy a back-up ooredoo SIM in case anyhing like this ever happens again. It has also made me think of retaining a certain amount of cash on me at all times. I would hate to ever be in a situation where I had no access to money or credit.
I guess in a tribal and community-driven place like Oman the locals will always have someone to turn to in a situation like this. For expats it can be somewhat different. It can be isolating enough here without suddenly finding yourself without any means of communication and without cash. As they say, money makes the world go round and, without it, you’re a little stuck. Not that I was going to starve or anything. My parents were war children and I think I inherited their food hoarding tendencies. I could probably eat for the next 3 weeks on what’s in the cupboards! But how would I survive without Facebook?! 
