Submarine cable cut slows internet in Pakistan

PTA says efforts are afoot to find out the exact location of the fault, ad hoc bandwidth being used to minimise impact

KARACHI:

A major fault in the submarine cable system on Monday evening slowed the internet in Pakistan, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said in a statement on Tuesday.

The regulator said that there was a cable cut in the TransWorld (TW)-1 submarine system at about 6pm on Monday. “The fault caused an outage of international bandwidth and may result in degradation of internet services for the users of the TransWorld bandwidth,” the PTA said.

The PTA added that efforts were afoot to find out the exact location of the fault, adding that ad hoc bandwidth was being arranged to minimise the impact of the fault. Experts, however, said that the loss of the bandwidth was a major issue that must be addressed, immediately.

“Relatively little has been announced by the PTA with regards to the cable damage, however, the massive potential for repercussions remains,” Noman Ahmed Said, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the SI Global Solutions told The Express Tribune.

Also read: Submarine cable fault slows internet across Pakistan

“It is necessary to have backup systems in place as issues like these occur frequently,” Said added, citing an example of the SMW4 submarine. “It is imperative for specialised teams to approach the scene and tackle it swiftly as loss of connectivity is simply not sustainable or affordable, especially involving losses on such a massive scale.”

Khurram Schehzad, the CEO of the Alpha Beta Core stressed the need for incentivising more and more companies to come and build internet connectivity infrastructure, and investment incentives to early-harvest of Web 3.0.

“These are backbones for digital and virtual economy with workflow efficiencies.”

Said expressed the hope that “our tech teams” would be “better equipped with the skillset required to tackle such problems in the future and to ensure a reliable measure in place to sustain temporarily during the repair period in order to prevent any losses”.