CARACHI:
Due to the failure of undersea cables, people in different parts of the country have been facing slow internet speed on social media platforms.
People witnessed disruptions while using Facebook, WhatsApp and other websites, which was later confirmed by authorities.
“There were disruptions on both DSL and mobile data, but for a few minutes,” said Aamir Allawala, general manager of Tecno Pack Electronics. The Express Grandstand.
A resident of Gadap town, Soban Hanif, said he encountered slow internet speed while working.
The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) released a statement confirming that two marine cable cuts were reported earlier in AAE-1 and SEAMEWE-5 near Egypt. The telecommunications regulator said the lines have been repaired while another blackout in IMEWE near Italy is being repaired.
However, all telecommunications traffic in Pakistan has been restored to normal. This was not just a problem in Pakistan, but was seen around the world.
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According to NetBlocks, a global internet monitor, global network data has seen internet connectivity disruptions in several countries, with a high impact seen in parts of Asia and Africa. “The outages were consistent with a disruption of international transits…ongoing incident.”
Noman Ahmed Said, CEO, SI Global Solutions said The Express Grandstand that cuts have been reported on several submarine cables which are currently being repaired. The Asia-Africa-Europe Cable 1 (AAE-1) is a 25,000 km submarine cable linking Southeast Asia to Europe through Egypt, linking Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia , Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. , Qatar, Yemen, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Greece, Italy and France.
“Involving three major continents, the loss of bandwidth is a major problem that must be stopped immediately,” he said. The Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 5 (SEA-ME-WE 5) network is an undersea fiber optic communications cable system that carries telecommunications between Singapore and France .
“The cable is approximately 20,000 km long and provides broadband communications with a nominal capacity of 24 terabits per second between Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and Europe” , said Noman Ahmed.
A cut was also reported in the SEA-ME-WE 5 cable near Egypt. The latest cable to suffer damage is the IMEWE cable near Italy. The IMEWE (India-Middle East-Western Europe) submarine cable is a 12,091 km submarine cable system that connects India and Europe via the Middle East.
Relatively little has been announced by the PTA regarding damage to the cable, however, the huge potential for repercussions remains, said Noman Ahmed.
Soban said he was working from home for a digital marketing company and his work was interrupted. “With the growing idea of working from home, the internet is becoming more and more important these days.”
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After the Covid-19 pandemic, working from home is becoming a normal phenomenon in the country, which is why the internet is gaining more value day by day. “Students also use the internet for education,” he said.
“It is necessary to have backup systems in place as issues like these occur frequently as with the cable cases above,” said Noman Ahmed. It is imperative that specialized teams approach the scene and tackle it quickly because the loss of connectivity is simply not sustainable or affordable, especially involving losses on such a massive scale.
“We hope that our technical teams will now be better equipped with the necessary skills to deal with such calamities in the future and to ensure a reliable floating measure in place to temporarily maintain during the repair period to avoid any loss” , did he declare.
“Unfortunately, Pakistan has a history of unreliable connections and networks, which often causes the masses to turn to using multiple networks in hopes of maintaining connectivity, which is an added expense,” he said. he declared. Additionally, there is often a big difference in the bandwidth provided by ISPs.
The PTA could look into regulating bandwidth to maintain speed, as it has done in similar cases before, he said. Bandwidth is one of the main resources of the telecommunications and IT sector and therefore it is imperative that it is regulated through policies that the PTA can therefore put in place.
