Submarine cable damage affects internet services

APP Published March 28, 2013

SEA-ME-WE 4 (SMW4) submarine cable system pictured.— PTCL Photo

MULTAN, Mar 27 - One of the international submarine cable’s (SMW4) has experienced fault in sea waters near Alexandria, Egypt which has impacted internet services in the Far East, Middle East, Pakistan, India and North Africa.

The total length of the SEA-ME-WE 4 (SMW4) submarine cable system is approximately 20,000 km which consists of the main backbone across the Eastern and Western worlds and links 14 countries with 16 landing stations across Europe, Middle East and Asia plus the extension links in various countries.

The international consortium of operators in the region that manages the submarine cable system is proceeding to deploy repair services to restore services at the earliest, said a press release issued here by PTCL on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, PTCL has already undertaken necessary actions to minimize the impact on the services to customers in Pakistan, by making alternate arrangements for internet capacity.

This has been made possible because of PTCL multiple submarine cable systems in Pakistan, added the release.

Customers may experience slow browsing during peak hours and PTCL sincerely regrets this temporary inconvenience caused to valued customers, under the prevalent circumstances, concluded the release.

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123456789

Mar 28, 2013 09:39am

well at least this time PTCL was kind enough to tell their valued customers what has happened. this whole month the internet speed in pakistan was irritating and the customer services of the PTCL would just blame things on your setting and doesnt even tell you that what the real problem is. Meanwhile in Pakistan: PTCL has increased the prices of their internet packages again by 200 Rs on 4 and less MBps, which makes Pakistan probably the only country where interent prices are going up. we would have loved to pay more if they were kind enough to throw one or another insfrastructure upgrade in additon to robbing their "valued" customers ("forced" customer is better because we have no other ISP)

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K G Surendran

Mar 28, 2013 10:31am

Marvels of modern technology are also susceptible till we move towards perfection.

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justpk

Mar 28, 2013 10:32am

and i am thinking that my internet is only slow

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Raheel Khan (@Raheel95343178)

Mar 28, 2013 12:47pm

can any one give me the detail of all undersea cables in pakistan i guess there are 4

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goodlooking777@hotmail.com

Mar 28, 2013 04:19pm

How long its going to take to get fixed ?

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ruby

Mar 28, 2013 04:32pm

The map is wrong. Chennai is not in the place indicated. Either the connection to India's East is at Visakhapatnam or the cable drawing is wrong.

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John

Mar 28, 2013 04:58pm

Pakistan needs to invest in additional international backbone links for internet infrastructure (oceanic, land-based and satellite).

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TechGuy

Mar 29, 2013 01:22am

Pakistan needs to invest in additional diverse international broadband links (oceanic, land- based cables, wireless and satellite) for its internet infrastructure.

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Venus

Mar 29, 2013 06:05am

By this underwater cable damage, most of the people are suffering.Though PTCL has alternative arrangement to run the internet but I guess until the fault would be repaired totally, we would get slow speed.

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Saad

Mar 29, 2013 12:31pm

@Raheel Khan There have been multiple submarine cable 'faults' in the recent years in the Mediterranean region. This is the second case this month alone. 3 men have been arrested in Alexandria, Egypt as what appears to be a sabotage attempt. Although most common occurrences have been due to ship anchors damaging the cables lying at seabed (even though most ships operating in the region have location of such cables mapped on their GPS navigation). Seacom is the cable operator, working on this line belonging to Telecom Egypt. To check on the latest status on the repairs, you may check : http://www.seacom.mu/news/article-140/seacom-outage-08-40-gmt/ For those a bit more tech savvy, you can read the article posted on Gizmodo last year, illustrating how real the threat of cable sabotage is. http://gizmodo.com/5912383/how-to-destroy-the-internet

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Atif

Mar 29, 2013 04:30pm

Hello, My internet speed is slow now after all that happened. I cant download movies like before.. can anyone tell me when are they gonna fix that cable?

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