Karachi, October 24, 2025: Internet service provider StormFiber announced on Friday that its internet services, affected by nationwide disruptions over the past week, are expected to be fully restored by Monday night.
The company said it anticipates “full recovery of the lost capacity within 72 hours (by 11:59pm on Monday, October 27, 2025),” after having already restored over 60 per cent of affected bandwidth through additional capacity on alternate submarine cables.
“We are continuing to add more capacity and reroute traffic to improve peak-time performance, with newly procured bandwidth coming online via UAE, Oman, and Hong Kong,” StormFiber stated, adding that customers should see “noticeable improvement” before complete restoration.
The service provider said its teams are working round the clock with international partners to restore “full performance and resilience.”
The disruptions began on October 20, when internet users across Pakistan reported slow browsing speeds and intermittent connectivity on various ISPs. While no official statement was initially issued by either the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) or the IT Ministry, users attributed the slowdown to submarine cable faults.
When contacted, IT Minister Shaza Fatima Khawaja had attributed the issue to a global outage of Amazon cloud services, though several users reported that their ISPs had cited cable damage as the cause.
According to StormFiber, the outage was linked to faults in multiple regional submarine cables, including the IMEWE and SEA-ME-WE4 systems, which carry a significant portion of Pakistan’s internet traffic.
“To mitigate the impact on our users, the Cybernet Network Operations team proactively procured additional submarine capacity on alternate paths, including the PEACE cable,” the company said.
However, StormFiber added that at around 5:30pm on October 20, the PEACE cable also suffered a cut in the Red Sea near Sudan, causing “evening peak-time congestion and intermittent slowdowns.”
Pakistan’s international bandwidth relies on several undersea cable networks operated by PTCL, Cybernet, and TransWorld Associates. PTCL operates three key systems — AAE-1 (Africa, Asia and Europe), SMW4 (South-East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe), and IMEWE (India-Middle East-Western Europe) — while the PEACE cable originates from China and connects directly to Pakistan.
Internet disruptions in Pakistan are not uncommon, with recurrent submarine cable faults often causing nationwide slowdowns in recent years.
