Cable fault hits Pakistan’s internet

Details: Vaughan O'Grady; Category: Optical & Fixed Networks; 30 October 2019; 4370 views

Reports from the press in Pakistan say that a submarine cable fault disrupted internet services in the country earlier this week.

Two of the six cable systems supplying internet connectivity to Pakistan – IMEWE (India Middle East Western Europe) and SEAMEWE 4 (South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 4) – apparently developed an as yet unspecified technical fault, which caused the slowdown.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL), the main operator of the cable system in Pakistan, is said to have diverted internet traffic to other lines while dealing with the problem. A PTCL spokesperson suggested that its technical teams were working on fully restoring internet services in the shortest possible time and added that the cable fault was somewhere near the Karachi region.

Last time the marine cables developed a fault was in July 2017. On that occasion, Pakistan press reports say, it took more than a month to locate where the fault had occurred.

Many internet-reliant systems have been affected by this outage, including mobile broadband, landline users and Pakistan International Airlines check-in systems, which were forced to move to backup systems and manual processes.