Pakistan is facing slow internet speeds due to a fault that has developed in SEAMEWE4, one of the major submarine cables that connect Pakistan with the rest of the internet in the world. PTCL heavily relies on the SEAMEWE4 cable, which means that Pakistanis will be facing this issue for the next few days.
According to PTCL’s Twitter account, the fault is of physical nature and occurred near Karachi in the sea. Officials said that location has been identified however rectification efforts are taking longer than what had been expected earlier.
PTCL has confirmed that bandwidth is now being shifted to other submarine cables to make sure that country’s demands are met adequately.
One of our Submarine Cables (SMW4) has developed a fault. Location has been identified and team is working on restoring the connectivity.
— PTCL Cares (@PTCLCares) June 24, 2015
ETR is not yet available but we expect the fault to be resolved within the next few hours. In case there is a delay we will share the ETR
— PTCL Cares (@PTCLCares) June 24, 2015
Bandwidth is being rationalized and optimized through load management. Inconvenience is regretted.
— PTCL Cares (@PTCLCares) June 24, 2015
Restoration of bandwidth through the SMW4 Cable could not be achieved due to physical fault in the undersea cable….. Cont’d
— PTCL Cares (@PTCLCares) June 25, 2015
Bandwidth is being enhanced on the other submarine cables while repair work can take 2-3 more weeks.
— PTCL Cares (@PTCLCares) June 25, 2015
Bandwidth enhancement will be completed today to cater for bandwidth requirement during peak hours. We will update once we get more info.
— PTCL Cares (@PTCLCares) June 25, 2015
The complete restoration of SEAMEWE4 could take a couple of weeks, and until then the bandwidth reliance on backup submarine cables will be enhanced. During this, internet users may face degraded download/upload speeds.
Page loading delays are going to remain high during this time, while some pages may not load at all. Reloading of the pages is advised while unnecessary high-rate data consumption is to be avoided.
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