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Pakistan’s major broadband provider is bracing netizens for a new round of slower speeds and patchy connectivity during peak hours.
Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) confirmed in a public advisory, detailing the reasons behind the onslaught of slow internet.
Two international subsea cables were cut in Saudi waters near Jeddah, affecting the capacity on the SEA-ME-WE 4 (SMW4) and IMEWE systems. These two systems are Pakistan’s primary routes to Europe and the Middle East. PTCL says international partners are working on repairs while local teams add backup capacity to stabilize service.
SMW4 and IMEWE are high-traffic fiber-optic cables that carry a significant share of Pakistan’s international internet. Both systems run through the Red Sea and connect onwards to Europe and Asia; a fault on these routes can ripple across multiple countries’ networks, especially during evening demand spikes. Similar Red Sea faults have previously caused slowdowns across the region due to the limited number of physically diverse paths through this maritime chokepoint.
Pakistan connects to the global internet via several cables landing primarily around Karachi, including SMW4, IMEWE, AAE-1 and others. When two major routes lose capacity at once, providers must rebalance traffic to remaining systems, which can lead to congestion, higher latency, and temporary throttling of heavy services like 4K video and large downloads.
Fixing deep-water fiber usually requires a specialized cable ship to localize the break, lift the cable from the seabed, splice in a new section, and relay it. The work is affected by weather, permits, and shipping logistics.
In past regional incidents, full restoration has ranged from several days to a few weeks. Operators often mitigate impact by purchasing or re-routing bandwidth over alternate cables while repairs proceed.
PTCL says it’s provisioning alternate bandwidth and traffic engineering to reduce user impact while international partners complete repairs on SMW4 and IMEWE. In the meantime, intermittent slowdowns are likely.
Historically, Pakistani carriers have shifted transit to other available systems and peering links to keep core services stable during such events. A few weeks back, PTCL faced a massive internet disruption across the country, with even the mobile internet users faced issues surfing.
Sources suggest it is due to an issue with upstream service provider, and all ISPs were affected.
