So once again, Pakistani users are expressing slow internet speed due to a technical fault in submarine cable. This has been confirmed by our sources. IMEWE submarine cable is down hence, its bandwidth is not available to Pakistani ISPs.

IMEWE submarine cable is the major fiber optic that connects Pakistan to the rest of world. It has got bandwidth capacity of 3.86Tbps. It transports more than two third of Pakistan’s internet traffic. Due to the fault, a large number of internet users, especially PTCL ones, are getting too many timeout messages and server not found errors. The sad part of the story is that it will take one or two week to fix the issue.

PTCL has confirmed the slow internet speed issue. You will be experiencing slow surfing, low download speed and high latencies. PTCL is now catering the traffic on other cables. Pakistani is currently having four fiber optics that connect the users to the internet. These include:

1. I-ME-WE with Design Capacity of 3.86Tbps
2. TW1 with design capacity of 1.28Tbps
3. Sea-Me-We-3 with 480 Gbps with two fibre pairs
4. Sea-Me-We-4 with design capacity of 1.28Tbps

A new fiber optic cable is also under construction as part of CPEC. Such issues have become quite become. After every month or two, internet outages occur in Pakistan. Let’s see when we will be able to enjoy fast and stable internet!