Internet complete restoration on Friday seen access in Pakistan’s central and northern regions following an hour-long outage caused by severe rains and flooding, according to the country’s telecom regulator.
Earlier, major Pakistani telecom companies claimed that connectivity was down in some places, including the capital and other major urban centers, with one company citing flooding as the cause.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said in a statement that the technical malfunction in data networks that caused the internet outage in Pakistan had been repaired, and all internet services have been returned to normal.
Earlier, the state-owned Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd. (PTCL) (PTCA.PSX) announced that its optical fiber network was experiencing difficulties, leaving consumers in the northern and central regions without service.
Twitter post: “Due to severe rainfall and flooding, PTCL’s optical fiber network is facing technical issues.”
It was later stated that the error had been corrected.
The issues experienced by PTCL affected other service providers, notably cellular data.
Telenor Pakistan, which is sponsored by Telenor (TEL.OL) of Norway, reported that its internet network was down due to an issue with its internet service provider.
Pakistani people commenting on social media claimed that other telecommunications services were out, but there were no statements from other companies recognizing problems.
Internet outages were widespread in the capital, Islamabad, and the second-largest city in Pakistan, Lahore, where fixed-line broadband customers and cellular network users reported no connectivity.
Numerous users, however, stated that Pakistan’s largest telecoms service, Jazz, owned by the Amsterdam-listed global provider Veon (VON.AS), remained operational throughout the outage.
Jazz’s head of external communications, Khayyam Siddiqi, told Reuters, “Jazz’s network is mostly unaffected due to its resilient architecture and many layers of protection, which guarantee a constant user experience.”
Pakistan, a nation of around 220 million people, has a significant and expanding population of internet users faces Internet Outages. According to the PTA, there are 116 million 3G and 4G users and 119 million broadband subscribers.