Internet users in Pakistan may face slower speeds during peak hours until 2 November 2026 because of emergency maintenance on the AAE-1 international submarine cable, Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) has announced. The company said the maintenance began on 27 October on the section of the cable between Italy and France. PTCL said users in Pakistan may experience minor service degradation during peak hours while the work continues. Because the work is on the European end of the cable, users are most likely to notice slower loading times when they access websites and services hosted in Europe, especially during busy evening hours.
The Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE-1) cable is one of the main routes carrying Pakistan’s international internet traffic. A submarine cable is a fibre-optic line laid on the seabed that carries data between countries, and AAE-1 stretches about 25,000 kilometres, linking Southeast Asia to Europe via Egypt and landing in Karachi. PTCL began its operations on the cable in 2017, and the system connects Pakistan to Europe through landing points in Greece, Italy, and France. Pakistan relies on a small number of undersea cables for its international connectivity, and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) chairman told a Senate committee in January 2025 that the country depends on seven of them. That concentration means maintenance on a single cable can be felt across the country.
This is not the first time AAE-1 has affected internet users in Pakistan. In January 2025, a fault on the cable near Qatar slowed internet speeds across the country for nearly two weeks before PTCL announced that it had been fixed. Other maintenance windows have also been announced this year, including work on one of PTCL’s submarine cables in May to repair a fault handled by the international consortium that manages it. The current maintenance is described as emergency work and is a repair on a section far from Pakistan, so the effect is expected to be smaller than a fault in the Gulf, but the company has not given a figure for how much speeds might fall.
PTCL’s announcement does not say whether backup bandwidth will be added during the maintenance window, and it does not name the other cables that will carry traffic while the Italy-France section is under repair. For users, the practical effect is likely to be slower video streaming, longer page load times, and lag on services that route through Europe during the evening, while services hosted closer to Pakistan may be less affected. The company has said the slowdown could last until 2 November, and users who see persistent problems after that date will need to check with their internet service provider or PTCL for updates on whether the repair has been completed.
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