As reported by the media and confirmed through statements posted by the company, there was a fire incident late last night at Cybernet’s head office in Karachi.
The fire, which broke out on an administrative floor, was contained by the fire suppression system and no casualties were reported. Power supply to the floor has been disconnected as a precautionary measure while the extent of damage caused by the fire is assessed.
A statement released by StormFiber – the FTTH division of Cybernet – last night explained that the temporary suspension of power supply had caused an outage in its network and disaster recovery processes have been initiated to restore services as soon as possible.
As of early this morning, it is reported that the company has moved its network to its secondary data center in Karachi, restoring services for Cybernet’s enterprise customers, including banks and government organizations, on priority. Soon after, internet access for StormFiber customers was also brought back. TV and phone are still offline as teams work to resume all services.
This outage has also affected StormFiber’s helpline and website, both of which remain temporarily unavailable, resulting in customers using Facebook and other social media platforms to report their concerns. StormFiber has been sharing regular updates regarding the incident to keep customers informed.
Sources within the company tell us that while network operations engineers in Karachi are implementing disaster recovery processes, Cybernet’s network operations center in Lahore has taken over and is managing nationwide network operations.
The cause of the fire outbreak has not been revealed yet. Upon questioning, a company spokesperson told ProPakistani that any comment on the cause would be speculative conjecture at this point while the incident is still being investigated thoroughly.
Update;
Cybernet issued following update on the fire incident today morning:
Restoration Update: Karachi Incident
Dear Customers,
We are writing to update you that as of last evening internet service through our DR site was successfully tested at full capacity; subsequently, our customers’ internet service was restored to full subscribed speeds.
Our telephone service, including our UAN, was tested for outgoing and incoming calls from all cellular networks and was also made operational at approximately 5 A.M. this morning.
Finally, while we had resumed analogue TV service in several cities late last night, as of this morning our digital TV service has also been made operational. Digital TV subscribers may find a number of channels missing from the line up.
We assure you that our head end engineers will be adding these over the course of the day. Because our digital service uses PEMRA mandated CAS to encrypt the broadcast stream, it took us longer than expected to ensure that the encryption was working for all digital HD boxes nationwide.
We are deeply sorry for the disruption to your service this weekend. We are immensely grateful for your patience and understanding during this time. We will strive tirelessly to retain your trust.
Best Wishes