Staff Report
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Tuesday said that a dual cut in the terrestrial segment of South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 5 — a submarine communications cable system that extends between Singapore and France — had been reported impacting internet services across the country.
In a tweet, it said that the fault had been reported between the cities of Abu Talab and Zafrana in Egypt.
“Alternate arrangements to provide uninterrupted internet services to the users have been made. Work is underway to remove the fault,” it added.
Meanwhile, Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd (PTCL) said that internet services in the country were partially impacted and some customers may face “minor service degradation”.
“PTCL in conjunction with the International Submarine Consortium is working to fully restore internet services on priority,” it said in a statement, adding that the company had ample bandwidth on alternate cables to cater to data needs.
The SEAMEWE-5 submarine cable system, commissioned in 2016, is nearly 20,000 kilometres long, extending from Marseille in France to Singapore.
Currently, there are seven submarine internet cable systems connecting to Pakistan, of which four are operated by Pakistan Telecom¬mu¬nication Company Limited, two by Transworld Associates, and a new cable system that recently came online, owned by a Chinese company.
Earlier this month, some internet users had experienced downgraded speeds after reports of a fault in one of the international submarine cables – the SMW5 – while major social media services also experienced a brief outage.
PTA had said that the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) across Pakistan have been notified by the PTCL that an outage has occurred in one of the international upstream networks once again.
“Standard arrangements to provide uninterrupted internet services to the users have been futile so far, with eastbound traffic impacted heavily due to pending issues that are still unresolved”.
In August, a large number of internet users, mainly in Karachi, had fa¬¬ced outages as the submarine cable system SEAMEWE-5, extending from Singapore to France and Italy, was damaged. A statement issued by Transworld Home, the company operating the cable, said that a nationwide disruption was caused due to a ‘fibre cut in terrestrial network’. A senior official of IT and telecommunication ministry had said that the disruption had occurred in the cable network of Transworld Associates, one of the three submarine cable operators in Pakistan.
The cable system, which was damaged at the junction of Suez Canal and Mediterranean Sea near Egypt, caused disruptions in other countries as well.
Currently, there are seven submarine internet cable systems connecting to Pakistan, of which four are operated by Pakistan Telecom¬mu¬nication Company Limited, two by Transworld Associates and a new cable system that recently came online, owned by a Chinese company.
