Under Sea Cable Cut Slows Down Internet Across Pakistan

SMW4, one of the four undersea internet cables that connects Pakistan to rest of the world, has been damaged in the segment 4 beyond Egypt for currently unknown reasons, impacting the internet speeds for majority of internet users with-in Pakistan.

This is second undersea cable that got damaged in parallel, resulting into serious browsing issues for Pakistani internet users.

The Estimated Time To Repair (ETTR) has not been announced as of yet, as PTCL and Transworld, the two lessee’s of the cable for Pakistan are in communication with SEAMEWE-4 consortium members to determine the time it will take to repair the cable.

Internet service providers estimates that around 40% of customers may experience slow browsing.

ISPs said that majority of internet traffic is already shifted to SMW3.

It merits mentioning here that other undersea backhaul data and voice cables namely IMEWE and EIG are also being repaired as they were damaged earlier this month.

South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) is an optical fibre submarine communications cable system that carries telecommunications between Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt, Italy, Tunisia, Algeria and France.

The cable is approximately 18,800 kilometres long, and provides the primary Internet backbone between South East Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East and Europe.