Submarine cable fault blamed for disrupted internet in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Tuesday linked the ongoing internet slowdown and degradation of services to a fault in “two of the seven international submarine cables connecting Pakistan internationally”.

The clarification came in the wake of the prevailing internet slowdown that experts and stakeholders attributed to the purported testing of an internet firewall to rein in social media, which is equipped with filters to block unwanted content from reaching a wider audience.

“The AAE-1 cable has experienced a 250G outage due to rerouting between Iran and Qatar,” the telecommunication authority said in an official statement.

Similarly, the PTA said, SMW 4 cable (1.5T) has been out of service due to faults near Karachi. It added operators were re-routing traffic on other available cables to "minimise the impact on internet users in Pakistan".

“The concerned teams are fixing the fault and PTA is monitoring the situation till internet speeds are normalised in the country,” the statement concluded.

A day earlier, PTA Chairman Maj Gen (retd) Hafeezur Rehman admitted the upgradation of the National Firewall System (NFS) or Web Management System (WMS) for controlling or removing contents from social media, citing orders from executives or courts.

He said the PC-1 for the NFS upgradation was approved in March 2019, when Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) was ruling the country, as per The News report. He also said that social media messaging service X, formerly Twitter, was banned for not complying with the directives issued by the interior ministry, as there was a defined mechanism to slap a ban or remove content on social media under the law of the land.

Under the Web Management System, it is the mandate of PTA to comply with the orders of the executive or superior courts and cited examples that they removed contents related to pornography or blasphemy, the PTA chief said.

However, the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Information Technology unanimously rejected slowing down of internet or banning social media platforms. They directed the Ministry of IT to come up with exact estimates of losses faced by the IT sector, in collaboration.

Wireless and Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan (WISPAP), Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA) and IT experts have slammed the Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif-led government over the issue, citing the economic impact on freelancers, IT professionals and the digital economy in general.

With P@SHA estimating a loss of $300 million loss in light of existing complaints by the businesses and the reputational damage, WISPAP Chairman Shahzad Arshad has said that businesses and individuals who depend on reliable internet connectivity which is an essential pillar of the country’s digital economy were now "struggling to maintain operations, and the slowdown is threatening their very survival”.

However, the government has denied its involvement in the issue with State Minister for Information Technology Shaza Fatima Khawaja blaming the use of virtual private networks (VPN) by internet users as the reason "their phones" slowed down.

"I can swear that the government of Pakistan did not block the internet or slow it down,” she said while speaking to the media last week.