Pakistan experiences ‘widespread’ internet disruption

ISLAMABAD: In a statement on X (formerly Twitter), internet watchdog Netblocks confirmed that Pakistan experienced widespread internet disruption on Wednesday, saying: “Live network data show a nation-scale disruption to internet connectivity in Pakistan”.

The organisation stated that the metrics showed national connectivity at 24 per cent of ordinary levels, corroborating user reports of a “widespread outage”.

In a statement by the spokesperson of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd (PTCL), the telecom said that: “Currently, the PTCL network is facing data outage in various cities due to which connectivity has been affected/...Our teams are actively working to resolve and rectify the issue at the earliest”.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) also confirmed the disruption in internet services in the country. In a post on social media on Wednesday, the PTA reiterated that internet services had suffered “up to some extent” in some parts of the country owing to some “fault in [the] PTCL system”. The PTA said that the authorities were monitoring the situation and work was underway to resolve the issue at the earliest.

Meanwhile, Downdetector, a website showing real-time information on outages of various websites and services, showed that a spike in outages of PTCL services was reported at around 1:30pm. According to Downdetector, 73 per cent of people complained of internet problems while 23 per cent of others reported a complete “blackout”.

The internet outage detector further said that most complaints were received from Karachi, Rawalpindi, Sargodha, Lahore, Faisalabad and Multan.

Data services on the PTCL network had been fully restored by 3:40pm, the telecom company saying that the network had “experienced service interruption earlier, but after thorough checks, it is confirmed that there was no fault found at the PTCL network end”.