ISLAMABAD: Major social media services including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp began to return online on Wednesday evening after users across Pakistan reported problems.
According to reports shared by the outage tracker Downdetector, the applications went down after 5pm, with #WhatsAppDown trending on Twitter in the country. A number of people took to Twitter with complaints regarding connectivity and logging into accounts. However, after a while, some users reported being able to send and receive messages on WhatsApp.
Meta — the company that owns these social media applications — has yet to address the matter.
According to the tracking website, in the last 24 hours, Instagram users in India and UAE have also faced problems logging into their accounts.
Downdetector tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources including user-submitted errors on its platform. The outage may have affected a larger number of users.
Earlier, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) confirmed that fault in one of the international submarine cables, the SMW5, has been reported, resulting in degraded internet services across the country.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) across Pakistan have been notified by Transworld Associates that an outage in one of the international upstream networks has occurred once again.
“Due to the SMW5 international submarine cable fault, we are currently experiencing service degradation in Pakistan. Our partners are working to resolve the issue on priority and are expected to complete work soon. We deeply regret any inconvenience caused,” Transworld said in a message to its partners in Pakistan.
Standard arrangements to provide uninterrupted internet services to the users have been futile so far, with eastbound traffic impacted heavily due to pending issues.
Users are also experiencing a degradation in PTCL’s network due to the added load, which could worsen as the load increases. Customers across Pakistan are expected to face degradation in internet services. Transworld is yet to issue any updates regarding the time needed to fix the issue. –Agencies
