The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has finally provided an explanation for the recent slowdown in internet services, attributing it to faulty undersea cables that require repairs. According to the PTA, these repairs will take some time, and the slowdown is expected to continue until early October. On the surface, this explanation appears reasonable, as previous internet disruptions have indeed been caused by damaged cables. However, this account does not address many of the peculiarities observed during this latest episode and raises more questions than it answers.
The main issue with the PTA’s assertion that undersea cables are solely responsible for the problem is that, for the vast majority of users, internet services—particularly the ability to send voice notes and images—functioned well on broadband connections but failed when using wireless phone services. Despite this, access to most other websites remained unaffected. This selective disruption suggests not a nationwide outage but rather a targeted, software-based policy affecting certain services while leaving others untouched. If the undersea cables were damaged, one would expect a general slowdown without such specific quirks in internet access.
Furthermore, this explanation does not align with the government’s own statements about testing firewalls, VPN whitelists, and other control methods during the same period as the internet slowdowns. This coincidence raises suspicions about the true cause of the issue. Additionally, the timeline provided by the government for resolving the problem—early October—seems unusually long. Other countries have managed to address similar undersea cable issues in a matter of days, yet our government has set a timeline of months.
All of this contributes to further confusion regarding our internet access situation. This disruption has even attracted the attention of organizations like Amnesty International and other human rights groups, which have urged Pakistan to ensure free and unrestricted access to the internet for all.
