Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) has announced that internet services across the country may experience slow speeds on Tuesday due to maintenance work on an undersea cable.
According to a statement shared by the company on X (formerly Twitter), engineers will begin repairing a faulty repeater in the submarine cable system at around 11 a.m. (PST) on October 14, and the process could take up to 18 hours.
PTCL said users might face degraded connectivity during the maintenance window and apologized for the inconvenience.
Meanwhile, the outage-tracking platform Downdetector recorded a spike in user complaints about access issues on Facebook and Instagram, suggesting intermittent disruptions already being felt across some regions.
This is not the first time Pakistan’s connectivity has been affected by damage to undersea infrastructure. In September, PTCL had reported cuts to submarine cables in Saudi waters that caused slower internet speeds during peak hours.
Earlier this year, a fault in the AAE-1 subsea cable disrupted online services nationwide before full connectivity was restored nearly two weeks later, on January 16.
Submarine cables form the backbone of Pakistan’s internet connectivity, and repeated faults in recent years have exposed the country’s dependence on limited international routes for online access.
