ISLAMABAD; Internet service provider Stormfiber announced on Friday that its services will be fully restored by Monday after a week of widespread disruptions affecting users across Pakistan.
Internet slowdowns were first reported on October 20, when users complained of sluggish browsing and connectivity issues. The outage was initially attributed to a fault in the submarine cable system — a recurring issue in the country. Despite mounting complaints, neither the affected ISPs nor the Ministry of IT and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) issued an official statement at the time.
When approached for comment, IT Minister Shaza Fatima Khawaja linked the problem to a global outage affecting Amazon cloud services. However, many users said their ISPs had cited submarine cable damage as the reason behind the degraded connectivity.
In a statement released on Friday, Stormfiber said: “We expect to fully recover the lost capacity within 72 hours (by 11:59 pm on Monday, October 27, 2025),” adding that “over 60 per cent of the affected capacity has already been restored through additional bandwidth on alternate cables.”
The company further said that it was adding more capacity and rerouting traffic via UAE, Oman, and Hong Kong to improve performance during high-demand hours. “Incremental capacity will be added in stages, so many customers will experience noticeable improvement before full restoration,” the statement added.
Stormfiber emphasized that its technical teams were working “around the clock with international partners to restore full performance and resilience.”
Explaining the cause of the disruption, the company said that several regional submarine cables, including IMEWE and SEA-ME-WE4, had suffered outages in recent months. The PEACE cable — which originates in China and connects to Pakistan — also faced a cut in the Red Sea near Sudan on October 20 around 5:30 pm, leading to further slowdowns.
According to PTA, undersea cables landing in Pakistan are operated by PTCL, Cybernet, and TransWorld Associates. PTCL operates three major systems: AAE-1 (Africa, Asia, and Europe), SMW4 (Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe), and IMEWE (India-Middle East-Western Europe).
Stormfiber said that in response to the outage, Cybernet’s Network Operations team had proactively secured additional submarine capacity through alternate routes, including the PEACE cable system.
Internet users in Pakistan frequently experience service disruptions due to recurring faults in the undersea cable network — an issue that continues to challenge the country’s digital connectivity infrastructure.
