Pakistan Faces Nationwide Internet Slowdown as Nayatel Reports Major Upstream Outage

Pakistan is witnessing a nationwide internet slowdown after Nayatel reported a major outage in one of its two upstream internet providers, disrupting a substantial portion of national traffic on Thursday.

The issue has caused widespread degradation across multiple regions, with users reporting sluggish browsing, delays in cloud services, buffering on streaming platforms and connectivity drops during video calls. The disruption underscores Pakistan’s continued dependence on a small number of international transit routes for global internet access.

In an official statement, Nayatel confirmed the scale of the disruption, stating:

We are experiencing a nationwide internet slowdown due to an outage in one of our two upstream providers. This issue is impacting a major part of internet traffic across Pakistan.

Our teams are actively monitoring the situation and working closely for early restoration. pic.twitter.com/522nM1aHxg

— Nayatel (@nayatelpk) November 21, 2025

With only two primary upstream paths carrying a significant share of Pakistan’s international internet capacity, the outage on one provider has pushed traffic onto the remaining link, creating congestion and high latency. Users in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Karachi and other major cities have reported inconsistent connectivity throughout the day.

Telecom experts note that Pakistan’s limited upstream redundancy remains a structural vulnerability. Even a single international cable or transit failure can trigger countrywide slowdowns. Similar incidents have occurred in the past, often caused by submarine-cable faults, power issues at landing stations, or routing misconfigurations overseas.

While Nayatel has not shared a definitive restoration timeline, technical teams are working to reroute traffic and stabilize performance as repairs proceed. Even after more than 12 hours, Nayatel has yet to update on the situation.