Nationwide Internet Outage Hits PTCL and Other ISPs

Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) customers suffered a critical internet shutdown on Tuesday night, with connectivity interruption affecting the nation. PTCL was worst affected, but other operators such as Nayatel and StormFiber also suffered service disturbances.

Downdetector also highlighted that this issue started intensifying around 9 PM PKT and more then 2,400 people reported it.  There was complete disruption in major cities including Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. This is reported as one of the major interruptions in recent months.

While the reason is unknown, industry analysts comment that such nationwide outages usually result from issues with the fiber backbone or international submarine cable faults, both of which are essential to Pakistan’s connectivity. Sources further point towards an upstream service provider fault being the reason behind the outage, impacting several ISPs at once.

PTCL recognized the outage, saying that they are working on this issue and the network will be restored as soon as possible.

With fixed-line services unavailable, customers switched to cellular data, but heavy traffic soon caused traffic on cellular networks as well.