PTA Chairman Says Submarine Cable Fault, Not Firewall, Disrupted Internet in Pakistan

On August 5th, 2024, internet users in Pakistan suffered from a massive service outage that lasted for many hours throughout the entire country. For a short time, some people believed that the Pakistani government’s move to restrict or block the internet was a calculated strategy to censor political content in the country.

Nonetheless, the chairman of Pakistan's Telecommunication Authority (PTA), Maj. Gen. Amir Azeem Bajwa, has made it undeniably clear that the outage was not caused by any government firewall or intentional restrictions imposed on the internet. Alternatively, the disruption was due to a malfunction in a very important submarine internet cable.

Maj. Gen. Bajwa announced at a press gathering that the problem began with a fault in the Asia-Africa-Europe-1 (AAE-1) submarine cable system, which is a crucial part of an international network that connects the internet to Pakistan and several other countries.

"The fault in the submarine cable system was the primary cause of the internet disruption, and not any firewall or intentional internet restrictions from the government," Maj. Gen. Bajwa stated. He noted that the PTA had been actively working with international cable operators to restore full service as quickly as possible.

Submarine cables such as AAE-1 are the long trunk of the global net being used to transmit both the internet and telecommunications traffic. They are deposited on the seabed and ultimately become connecting devices for the different continents and countries transmitting data at high speed over great distances such as intercontinental.

A cable system known as AAE-1 which started working in 2017 extends for more than 25,000 km and links South Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. In fact, the AAE-1 system stands as one of the largest and necessarily the most critical submarine cable networks around the area, as it allows countries such as Pakistan, India, Egypt, and even France to communicate and access the internet with ease.

Faults or disruptions in these submarine cable systems can have heavy repercussions, as in the case of the recent outage in Pakistan. When a cable is damaged, either from natural causes like earthquakes or human activities such as accidental anchor drops, it can lead to major internet service interruptions for the regions until the issue is resolved.

Maj. Gen. Bajwa mentioned that the PTA had worked closely with the cable operators in the August 5th incident in Pakistan to locate and resolve the issue as soon as feasible. "Our teams worked round the clock with the international cable consortium to restore services, and we were able to bring the internet back online within a few hours," he stated.

By reassuring the public that government censorship or firewalls were not the cause of the internet outage, the PTA chairman's response has helped allay fears and conjecture. It emphasizes how crucial undersea cable infrastructure is to preserving dependable and continuous internet connectivity, particularly for nations that depend on these networks for their principal international data transfer.

Incidents like the one in Pakistan draw attention to the weaknesses in the global internet infrastructure as the world grows more reliant on it for communication, trade, and information access. It serves as a reminder that in order to guarantee the security and resilience of internet services globally, undersea cable networks require ongoing investment, upkeep, and redundancy.