2 min read
A 7.5 magnitude earthquake hit parts of Pakistan, Afghanistan and India today, causing a terrible amount of destruction and loss. Apart from a death toll that has now climbed to nearly 150, it also caused the telecoms in the area to be bogged down and it was being speculated that telecom infrastructure has been damaged due to the effects of the earthquake, but now, sources are claiming that the network was down for all of the big five telecoms in Pakistan due to high traffic.
Soon after the earthquake hit and the first reports started coming in, there was a rush for people to call their loved ones, living in the earthquake-affected areas. The fact that the Richter scale was indicating a massive 7.7 magnitude(revised later to 7.5) earthquake didn’t help matters either. This caused massive panic, which led to a huge spike in mobile phone traffic, and ultimately caused a mild-outage with networks under-performing. ProPakistani reports that all the Mobile phone companies have admitted that even though the networks were indeed under-performing due to a huge spike in traffic, not a single cell site went offline during or after the earthquake due to shocks, so the claims of telecom infrastructure damage by the media are completely bogus.
Mobile phone companies also claim that the situation is much better now and they will be monitoring their performance closely to ensure smooth performance.
While the damage caused by the earthquake is still being assessed and people are trying to locate their loved ones, we recommend are readers to resist using mobile phone networks unnecessarily, and rely on WhatsApp, Facebook and other means of communication.
If you are looking for a way to let your relatives or family know about your safety and are still affected by this mobile network outage, you can use Google or Facebook’s safety tools for earthquake-victims.
Source- ProPakistani Image- ReviveManagement
