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Published 22 Feb, 2022 04:57pm

Internet services disrupted across Pakistan due to submarine cable fault

A fault in an undersea cable system over 400 kilometres off the coast of Pakistan is causing internet outages across the country.

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Tuesday said in statement that internet services might be disrupted across Pakistan due to a suspected break in the Trans World (TW1) underwater cable system.

TW1 is a 1,300-kilometer cable system that connects Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman.

“A cable cut has been reported in the Trans World (TW1) undersea cable system at around 6 PM on Monday,” read the statement. “This fault has caused an interruption of international bandwidth and may result in disruption of internet services for customers of Trans world bandwidth.”

The PTA also said that it was arranging ad hoc bandwidth to reduce the effect.

"Efforts are being made to determine the specific site of the problem and the projected restoration time,” it said.

Last month the PTA had found a fault in the international submarine cable, SMW4, operated by the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) in the Indian ocean.

The South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4, SMW4) is an approximately 18,800 km submarine cable connecting Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy, Tunisia, Algeria and France.

It provides the primary Internet backbone between South East Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East and Europe, according to Wikipedia.

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