Islamabad, September 8, 2025: Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Shaza Fatima Khawaja on Monday confirmed that widespread internet disruptions across Pakistan are the result of a submarine cable cut near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Speaking to reporters, the minister said she was in constant contact with the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) regarding the outage.
“It is correct that slow internet is affecting businesses,” she acknowledged, adding that assessments were underway to determine the extent of the damage.
The confirmation follows a PTCL statement last week, which warned that damage to submarine internet cables in Saudi waters could impact services in Pakistan during peak hours. The disruption has affected partial bandwidth on two major undersea cable systems — SMW4 and IMEWE — that connect Pakistan to global networks.
PTCL said international partners were working on a priority basis to restore connectivity, while local teams had arranged alternative bandwidth to ease the impact. However, the IT minister clarified that no time frame had yet been provided by international repair agencies.
“The nature of the cable damage is still being reviewed,” she said.
The outage has not been limited to Pakistan. Users across the Middle East, including the UAE and Gulf countries, also reported slow connections following the cable cut in the Red Sea.
Industry experts note that ship anchors are responsible for nearly 70% of submarine cable damage worldwide. Repairs in the Red Sea are considered particularly complex due to heavy shipping traffic and challenging underwater conditions. In March 2024, three cables were damaged in the same region, causing major disruptions to internet and cloud services globally.
