ISLAMABAD: On Thursday evening, a significant number of internet customers, primarily in Karachi, experienced interruptions due to damage to the underwater cable system SEAMEWE-5, which connects Singapore to France and Italy.
The cable operator, Transworld Home, said in a statement that a “fibre cut in terrestrial network” was to blame for the national outage.
One of the three undersea cable providers in Pakistan, Transworld Associates, had its cable network disrupted, a senior official of the IT and telecommunications ministry informed Dawn.
Other nations were also affected by the cable system’s destruction, which occurred in the Mediterranean Sea and Suez Canal’s confluence near Egypt.
According to a senior Transworld Associates executive, the cable is primarily under water, although a stretch of around 480 km is on land in Egypt to prevent interference from ships transiting the Suez Canal.
The official also said that addressing damage on land was simpler than finding and repairing it underwater.
The almost 20,000-kilometer-long South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-5 (SEAMEWE-5) underwater cable system, which connects Singapore and Marseille, France, was launched in 2016.
Currently, there are seven submarine internet cable systems connecting to Pakistan, of which four are operated by Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited, two by Transworld Associates and a new cable system that recently came online, owned by a Chinese company.
