KARACHI: The fault in the SEA-ME-WE 5 (SMW5) international submarine cable has been repaired, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) confirmed, with internet services expected to continue without interruption.
The restoration ends a brief but disruptive period of degraded connectivity that affected millions of Pakistani consumers, freelancers, students, and businesses earlier this week.
On July 2, PTA issued a press release announcing a fault in the SMW5 international submarine cable system. The regulator warned that some internet users “may experience intermittent degradation in service quality and connectivity” as a result.
The fault was traced to a subsea segment of the cable system, with earlier reports indicating issues near Abu Talat, Egypt. Transworld Associates (TWA), the landing party for SMW5 in Pakistan, worked with the international SMW5 consortium to identify the root cause and determine an estimated time for restoration.
During the outage, PTA said internet traffic was rerouted through alternative international links to minimise disruption and ensure continuity of services. A senior TWA executive noted that ISPs were being shifted to spare capacity maintained by the company while repair work continued.
The disruption caused widespread frustration as users reported slow browsing speeds, failed uploads, and frequent outages.
It may be mentioned here that Pakistan’s gig economy, which relies heavily on stable international bandwidth, faced delayed submissions and disrupted client calls. TWA’s network caters to around 40% of internet traffic in Pakistan, amplifying the impact.
Besides these, merchants reported failed transactions and payment gateway timeouts, while digital banking apps experienced sluggish performance.
PTA acknowledged that “periodic deterioration in service quality and connectivity” could occur for some users until full restoration.
The SEA-ME-WE 5 cable is a 20,000 km fiber-optic system linking Southeast Asia to Europe via the Middle East. It became operational in 2017 and is one of six international submarine cables serving Pakistan.
