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 .The cable system, which was destroyed at the intersection of Suez Canal & Mediterranean Sea close Egypt, caused difficulties in other nations as well.
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.
Seven undersea internet cable systems now link to Pakistan; four of these systems are run by Pakistan Telecommunication Business Limited, two by Transworld Associates, and one new cable system that only just went live and is owned by a Chinese company.
