The Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) on Thursday claimed that the “slow browsing” issue caused by a damaged international submarine cable has been resolved in record time.
“We are pleased to inform you that the slow browsing issue caused by the international submarine cable AAE-1 outage has been resolved in record time,” read a brief statement issued by the company. “The teams worked tirelessly to restore services, and we sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding during this time,” it added.
Last week, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) had announced that the degradation of internet services nationwide was mitigated through an ad hoc arrangement that added bandwidth into the system. “Now there is no degradation of Internet services across the country,” it had said, though consumers had noted that issues persisted, particularly in accessing social media websites.
Pakistan is connecting to the internet through seven international submarine cables. Of these, the PTCL manages three—the AAE-1; SMW-4; and IMEWE. The auxiliary connections from these cables are located in Karachi. The seven cables combined provide 8 terabytes of bandwidth, which authorities have claimed is insufficient to meet the needs of Pakistan’s growing digital population.
To alleviate the issue, the government has said it is adding a new cable to the system. The new cable should go live by the end of the year and has the potential to provide the country an additional 24 terabytes of bandwidth.