Country expected to witness further internet outage

More internet outages can be expected in the coming days as optic fibre cables were damaged by heavy machinery used to clear water in Sindh, said the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd (PTCL) in a report. Earlier the Ministry of IT and Telecom, taking note of repeated internet outages, sought a technical report from PTCL as well as the telecom sector regulator – Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). Responding to the query, PTCL said that the issues were reported mainly due to flood relief efforts taking place in the Sukkur division of Sindh.

PTA assured that the cuts in the optic fibre were not due to any sabotage or criminal activity, but due to the trenches being dug up in various places to divert and/or drain flood water. According to the report filed by the national telecom, the last disruptions reported on August 22 and 23 were due to multiple cuts in Ghotki, Khairpur, Sukkur districts of the Sindh division, and the most serious damage was in Ranipur tehsil (taluka) of the Khairpur district.

Minister for IT and Telecom Syed Aminul Haque warned that initial reports suggested the situation was serious. “Due to extensive flooding, locals in the area dug up trenches submerging most of the path on which the underground cables are buried,” the minister said. The ministry has directed PTCL to declare an emergency so repairs can be initiated. The authority has also been tasked with constantly monitoring the quality of service, he added.

The total internet usage in Pakistan is around six terabytes, supplied mainly via seven submarine internet cable systems; four of these cables are operated by PTCL, two by Transworld Associates and a new cable system that recently came online, owned by a Chinese company. However, almost 80% of the country’s internet traffic is powered via PTCL’s network cables of over 50,000km. While each PTCL cable can host up to 6.5 terabytes of data, only 70% of the total capacity is utilised so traffic can be shifted to other cables in case of damage or emergencies.

Apart from its running own retail internet service, a large number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), including Storm Fibre and Nayatel, buy bulk internet from the national telecom. So, any damage accrued on the company’s cable system also results in internet service disruptions for the customers of other ISPs. A senior official of the ministry added that while cable damages and service degradations are reported almost daily, the situation becomes serious when the optic fibre gets hit. “As cables were damaged in upper Sindh, the internet service in Punjab, KP and some areas of Balochistan suffered, but there was no such issue for consumers in Karachi, Hyderabad, Gwadar and other districts of the South,” the official said.