PTA says submarine cable fault resolved, internet services back to normal

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) announced on Friday that internet services in the country were back to normal after issues with the SEA-ME-WE 5 (SMW5) international submarine cable system were resolved.

In a statement, the authority said that the fault in the cable system, which had led to widespread connectivity issues in the country on Thursday night, had been resolved, adding that internet traffic had returned to normal.

It said Transworld Associates’ (TWA) international transit capacity has been restored. According to its website, TWA is the only private-sector operator with exclusive ownership of submarine fibre-optic cable systems.

Subsequently, internet service provider Nayatel said that “international traffic has returned to normal”.

“Our teams continue to closely monitor the network to ensure service stability,” it said.

On Thursday night, the PTA had said that a technical fault along the SMW5 route was affecting data traffic. It had said that “some internet users may experience intermittent degradation in service quality and connectivity as a result of the fault.”

In November, a new submarine internet cable — the South-East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 6 (SEA-ME-WE 6) — landed in Pakistan.

The cable has a total capacity of over 100 terabits per second and it will provide “one of the lowest-latency routes between Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Western Europe”, the information technology ministry said. It added that Pakistan has been allocated a total of 13.2tbps.

The ministry elaborated that SEA-ME-WE 6 featured “more fibre pairs and more than double the capacity” of previous SEA-ME-WE systems, enhancing resilience and diversification across high-traffic Asia-Europe routes through trans-Egypt geo-diversified crossings and landing points.