Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd (PTCL) said on Friday that teams were working “diligently” to resolve the issue of outages faced by users since last night after a fault in one of the undersea internet cables connecting Pakistan slowed down the speed. of the network in the country.
According to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the fault occurred on the Asia-Africa-Europe-1 (AAE-1) cable near Qatar.
The Africa-Asia-Europe (AAE)-1 cable, which began operations in 2017, connects Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Pakistan, India, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Greece, Italy and France .
Cable failures caused internet users in Pakistan to experience frequent slowdowns and outages in 2024. While companies and internet providers alleged that government attempts to monitor internet traffic were responsible, the PTA issued a statement in August attributing the slowdown to a faulty undersea cable. .
According to a statement issued today by PTCL, teams were working “diligently to resolve the matter as soon as possible.”
“Due to an outage of the international submarine cable, you may experience slow navigation issues,” he said.
“We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused during this time,” he added.
On the other hand, said PTCL spokesperson Amir Pasha. sunrise.com that the state company was “in contact with the international teams” that were working on the issue.
“We receive regular updates from them,” he said, adding that the fault occurred on the cable near Qatar.
Yesterday, during a meeting of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on IT and Telecommunications, Minister Shaza Fatima Khawaja told the committee that IT or any other industry had not reported any internet-related issues.
The minister’s response infuriated PPP MNA Sharmila Farooqi, who expressed disappointment over the officials’ attitude.
Pakistan has some of the slowest internet in the world despite an improvement in average fixed and mobile broadband speeds in October, according to global speed test data.
Ookla’s Speedtest global index for October showed that for fixed broadband (cable connections to your homes or offices), Pakistan ranked 141st out of 158 countries with an average speed of 15.6 mbps.
In terms of mobile data, the country ranked 100th out of 111 countries with an average speed of 20.61mbps.
Over the past few months, users across Pakistan have been experiencing slow speeds, difficulties downloading media on WhatsApp, and intermittent connectivity issues.
Frequent internet outages were added to limited access to virtual private networks used by many Pakistanis to access X, among other restricted websites. Since July, the country has improved its ranking in fixed broadband speed from 145 to 141 and in mobile data from 101 to 100.
The government had tacitly acknowledged last month in the National Assembly that it was behind the continued internet outages and monitoring of social media platforms, citing prevailing security concerns.
