Internet services disrupted across Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Internet users in Pakistan saw their connections slow dramatically late Tuesday, with many having trouble loading popular sites or receiving repeated timeout messages. Outage monitors also saw an increase in complaints from the customers of several service providers.

In a statement, Nayatel confirmed that the outage was caused by a fault at one of its upstream providers. The company assured subscribers that engineers were implementing a solution and had placed an estimated time of restoration as 1:15 a.m.

The dip comes when Pakistan’s connectivity is still under strain from several undersea cable cuts in early October. The damage, which was reported in the Red Sea, diverted traffic onto longer routes, leading to slower speeds and greater latency for Pakistan and surrounding nations.

Industry observers and observer groups have named the impacted systems to include SMW4 and IMEWE, two of the most important cables in the Asia-Europe lane. Authorities have previously warned that four to five weeks could elapse before repairs would be effected, increasing the possibility of repeated bottlenecks for peak traffic hours even when domestic networks are stable.

For impacted users at the moment, live outage maps like Downdetector can give ongoing status information. Temporary relief might be achieved by altering DNS settings temporarily, using VPN servers nearer to Europe, or using mobile data. Specialists point out, however, that these practices bring only short-term relief until there is a complete restoration of upstream capacity.