Internet in Pakistan went down

Suffering through the hands of my worn-down internet, I was on the verge of calling my internet provider and give them a piece of my mind when I found out that it wasn’t just my connection. It was (pretty much) everyone’s internet and everyone was equally annoyed.

It’s not just you, Internet all over Pakistan has been pretty slow lately

Internet connections, all over Pakistan, began showing connectivity issues today and it was hard to figure out why was it happening so.

People in many of my chats had been wondering why the internet in Pakistan was so bad last evening particularly and there were weird rumors

Many of us were under the delusion that the internet issues and the Islamabad Rally might be related somehow. After affirmation from more than one person, the conclusion deduced was that I wasn’t the only one suffering. *phew*

Turns out there was a less exciting reason why the whole country’s internet was down

According to the authorities, major submarine cables connecting Pakistan with the outside world had gone offline… just like that.

Around 5 pm, internet throughout Pakistan went down and at first nobody could figure out why. Two of the major submarine cables, IMEWE and SEAMEWE 4, that carry almost 50% of Pakistan’s internet traffic suffered a fault and caused this massive internet issue. The location of the fault within the cables is yet to be identified.

Furthermore, ISP’s have also confirmed the outage and have also claimed to have been trying to shift the load to other submarine systems.

https://twitter.com/HaadeaP/status/1189219608663941127

The PTA hasn’t exactly given a timeframe about when the repair of the submarine cables will finish so internet in Pakistan might remain slow for some of you, still

The Pakistan telecommunication Authorities are unsure regarding the time that it may take to repair the cables and get the internet back on track. However, it is being assumed that the repair may take several hours!

PTA officials, however,  gave out a statement for the inconvenience, stating that their technical teams were working on it to fix the repair.

https://www.facebook.com/PTAOfficialPK/posts/1301700730001066?__xts__[0]=68.ARCPB6Dqor0iQlNhn0oKbDtEID9BDDa-Rpx_KjxLOQvOWykrMIRJexSTuIVzpqQK6E4qngMSBBIW6Xp7AYgl4bWFbJMJWDRui2E1XCgjyIx6_9PHkzlI8JGSLx9RGhXa6YH_xaJiGUhm5vFoPqz2BRB9fFVucIvPGLNjaZuhmMbIeBJXuE2UPumZgvcL6w9JtO3k8D2hCiqetrpPMpDwRaoMN0550KW5Th7qmSpDCLcGkQsQ5W-kHwzBFrdF-mZbFXRKULzbjd-m3ywu7QjiQpDt6mKckovxO8aFLIYvgAFDNxjkTKTKBeg1MkynDFteJNlEdyOxsds9CLa98NUBhQ&__tn__=-R

PTCL also issued a statement of their own

And they kept giving updates on the matter

And they’ve apparently managed to fix the issue, for now

Of course, this isn’t the first time such a cable “fault” has happened but this is also not even the first time this is happening within just this year LOL

Back in June something similar happened and PTCL had to issue a similar statement about some cable cuts.

People are super annoyed at the moment and honestly, the wait for the internet to be right back on is super ‘exhausting’. But I guess many people’s internet seems to have been fixed for now.