Crisis like situation as Pakistan faces 5-hour Internet breakdown
Pakistan Times Staff Report

LAHORE: All the Internet Services Providers (ISPs) in the country faced a crisis-like situation on Friday when all the three STM links of Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) collapsed for about five hours.

The STM links of the PTCL, which were the only source of worldwide connectivity for the ISPs, remained dead for almost five hours, leading to serious inconvenience and embarrassment to the Internet users throughout the country.

The Internet service went out of order at 2:44 pm and it remained suspended till 7:25 pm.

Serious Trouble

The offices of newspapers also faced a serious trouble due to the suspension of Internet service that kept suspended link with the regional offices, bureaus, correspondents, news agencies, and all other organisations which transfer their stories, information to newspapers through email or Internet.

Yet another report says that Internet service across the country came to a halt for more than three hours on Friday due to fibre link damage suspending business activities and annoying Internet users.

The disconnection occurred about four in the afternoon when a local development organisation damaged an underground optical fibre cable on Marston Road near Gul Bai, which was tracked at six in the evening.

“The damage was not of very serious nature,” said Tanveer Ahmed, senior executive vice president of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company. “It took an hour or two to get it fixed.

Careless Operation

It was all due to careless operation by the particular organisation.” He said the damage in the fibre link caused Internet service suspension across the country as it was attached to the main undersea fibre link, connecting Pakistan with the rest of the world.

The country’s telecom system is connected with only one undersea fibre link called SEAMEWE-3 (Southeast Asia, Middle East, Western Europe-3).

Meanwhile, PTCL officials say, the STM-I link went out of order on Friday afternoon at 2:44 pm and the service remained suspended till late evening.

These three links BD from United Kingdom, Sticks from Singtal and Sprints from United States provide 155 mega bite per second Internet service, but these links were not available during the said period.

Of the Problem

The official said that according to initial inquiry the problem occurred at Karachi where cable, which was used in interconnectivity was damaged. He said the department has started an inquiry and detail of the report would be made public soon.

To a question he said that same problem had occurred a few months ago when an STM Link, which interconnect the web services with Singapore was damaged as a result the service remained suspended for two days, but this time all the three STM links went out of order, completely stopping the web service of all the ISPs in the country.

He said that PTCL would take action against its officials who would be found guilty in the inquiry report.●