Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Shaza Fatima Khawaja said on Thursday that Pakistan’s telecom sector faced a double challenge this month as floods damaged infrastructure at home while multiple submarine cable cuts disrupted international connectivity.
She explained that five submarine cables near Jeddah in the Red Sea were damaged — four between September 6 and 7 and one earlier — leading to a slowdown in internet services across the country. “The impact on Pakistan was 1.3 terabytes, but due to redundancy measures, the net effect was limited to about 400 gigabytes,” she said.
At the same time, floods had taken several telecom towers offline. According to the minister, field teams have worked continuously to stabilize the system, and 90 percent of the affected towers have already been restored.
“PTA, USF, and NTC teams played an important role in managing this crisis,” she noted.
