PTCL internet services disrupted in various cities across Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, JUL 31: Internet services provided by Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd (PTCL) suffered disruption across the country on Wednesday, the company said.

“PTCL network is facing data outage in various cities due to which connectivity has been affected,” PTCL spokesperson Amir Pasha told Dawn.com.

“Our teams are actively working to resolve and rectify the issue at the earliest,” he added.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) spokesperson Malahat Obaid attributed the disruption to a “fault in the PTCL system”.

“Internet/broadband users may experience degraded services during peak hours,” she said, explaining that the disruption may affect PTCL users and those internet service providers using PTCL’s bandwidth.

The spokesperson added teams were currently fixing the fault while the PTA was monitoring the situation till internet/broadband services were back to normal.

Dr Shahid Farooq Alvi, president of the Pakistan Telecommunication Access Provider Association (PTAPA), also confirmed to Dawn.com that PTCL’s internet services “all over Pakistan” were not working.

He said PTCL provided 70 per cent of the internet services in the country.

“Companies were also not informed about when the system would start providing internet,” the PTAPA president said.

Global internet monitor Netblocks said “live network data [showed] a nation-scale disruption to internet connectivity in Pakistan”.

“Metrics show national connectivity at 24pc of ordinary levels, corroborating user reports of a widespread outage,” it said in a post on X.

Downdetector, which tracks outages, showed a spike in reported outages of PTCL services from around 1:30pm onwards.

This screengrab, taken at around 4pm on July 31, shows reported outages of PTCL’s internet services.
The majority of the complaints, 73 per cent, reported “internet” problems while 23pc had reported “total blackout”.

Cities from where most of the complaints had been reported included Karachi, Rawalpindi, Sargodha, Lahore, Faisalabad and Multan, Downdetector stated.

A perusal of X showed complaints from several users, with the PTCL replying to three of them between 11am and 1pm.

Internet services had suffered brief disruption in parts of the country in April, with Netblocks stating that operators attributed the disturbance to a “technical issue”.