Undersea Cable Cuts in Pakistan: 7 Shocking Ways They Slow Your Internet and Proven Fixes for 2026

Introduction

Undersea cable cuts in Pakistan do not happen in Pakistan most of the time. They happen hundreds or thousands of kilometers away, on the seabed of the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea or off the coast of Egypt. Yet when they do, a student in Multan cannot load a lecture, a freelancer in Lahore loses a client call, and WhatsApp voice notes in Karachi refuse to download.

That is because almost all of Pakistan’s international internet traffic travels through a small number of fiber-optic cables lying on the ocean floor, all landing in Karachi. Satellites carry only a tiny share of global internet traffic. When even one major cable breaks, the remaining ones have to carry the extra load, and the whole country slows down.

Pakistan has felt this repeatedly. In 2024, PTA blamed faults in the SMW4 and AAE-1 cables for months of slow internet. In September 2025, cuts to the SMW4 and IMEWE systems near Jeddah degraded connectivity in Pakistan, India and the Gulf.

Some breaks are accidents caused by ship anchors or earthquakes. Others raise harder questions, from vessels dragging anchors through cables in conflict zones to suspected sabotage in the Baltic Sea that led to criminal charges. This guide explains how Pakistan connects to the world, why cables break, exactly how a cut affects your speed, which incidents hit the country hardest, what is being done to build more resilience, and what you can do when the next outage arrives.

How Pakistan Connects to the Global Internet

To understand the impact of undersea cable cuts in Pakistan, start with the map. Pakistan’s international internet runs mainly through submarine fiber-optic cables that come ashore at landing stations in and around Karachi.

The cables that land in Karachi

By late 2025, Pakistan was the landing point for nine international submarine cable systems, all making landfall in Karachi, according to DataCenterDynamics. The main systems include:

• SEA-ME-WE 4 (SMW4) and SEA-ME-WE 5 (SMW5), long consortium cables linking Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
• IMEWE, connecting India, the Middle East and Western Europe.
• AAE-1, linking Asia, Africa and Europe.
• TW1, operated by Transworld Associates, connecting Pakistan to the Gulf.
• PEACE, a newer system linking Pakistan with East Africa and Europe.
• 2Africa and Africa-1, which landed in Karachi in early 2025.
• SEA-ME-WE 6 (SMW6), which landed at Hawkes Bay in late 2025.

Some of the newest systems were expected to enter full service in 2026, and timelines have been affected by security problems in the Red Sea. Landing a cable is not the same as having its capacity live, so the real number of active routes at any moment can be lower than the headline count.

Landing stations and who controls them

Cables come ashore at cable landing stations run by a few companies, mainly PTCL and Transworld Associates. From there, bandwidth is sold to ISPs and mobile operators. Industry groups such as the Wireless and Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan have argued that this concentration limits competition and keeps bandwidth costs high.

Total capacity

Before SMW6 came onboard, Pakistan’s total international bandwidth was reported at about 13.2 Tbps, and SMW6 was expected to add roughly 4 Tbps initially. That sounds like a lot, but it is shared among more than 100 million internet users, and capacity is not spread evenly across cables or operators.

Why routes through the Red Sea matter

Many of Pakistan’s cables to Europe pass through the Red Sea and Egypt. This corridor is estimated to carry around 17% of global internet traffic, which makes it one of the world’s most important and most vulnerable digital chokepoints.

Why Undersea Cables Break

Submarine cables are tough, but they lie on the seabed for thousands of kilometers, often in busy shipping lanes. According to the International Cable Protection Committee, as cited by Gulf News, up to 200 submarine cable cut incidents are reported worldwide every year. Most have ordinary causes, and the same is true of the undersea cable cuts in Pakistan’s own history.

1. Ship anchors

Anchors are one of the biggest threats. A ship anchoring in the wrong place, or dragging its anchor while drifting, can snag and sever a cable. In shallow waters near ports and in crowded corridors like the Red Sea, the risk is high.

2. Fishing activity

Bottom trawling and heavy fishing gear can scrape across cables in shallower waters. Globally, fishing and anchoring together account for the large majority of cable faults.

3. Earthquakes and undersea landslides

Seismic activity can shift the seabed and snap several cables at once. One of the most famous examples is the 2006 earthquake off Taiwan, which damaged multiple cables and disrupted internet across East Asia for weeks.

4. Ageing and wear

Older systems suffer from wear, corrosion at joints and equipment failures at repeaters or landing stations. Some cable “faults” are not cuts at all but technical failures that still remove capacity.

5. Seabed erosion and currents

Strong currents and shifting sediment can wear down cable sheathing over time. During the 2024 slowdown, Pakistan’s state minister for IT pointed to undersea erosion affecting SMW4.

6. Deliberate damage and sabotage

Intentional damage is rarer, but it is the most worrying. Cables can be targeted during conflicts or by actors seeking to disrupt communications, and proving intent on the seabed is difficult. This is covered in detail in the section on illegal activity below.

7. Repair delays

The cut itself is only half the problem. Repair ships are limited worldwide, permits to work in some waters take time, and security risks in conflict zones can delay repairs for weeks or months. That is why a single fault can affect Pakistan’s internet long after the break.

7 Ways Undersea Cable Cuts in Pakistan Slow Your Internet

Undersea cable cuts in Pakistan do not switch off the internet. They squeeze it. Here is what actually happens between the break and your phone.

1. Total capacity drops

Each cable carries a share of Pakistan’s international bandwidth. When one fails, that share disappears. In August 2024, PTA said the SMW4 cable (about 1.5 Tbps) was out of service due to faults near Karachi, while AAE-1 had a 250G outage. That is a large slice of national capacity gone overnight.

2. Remaining cables get congested

Operators reroute traffic onto working cables. Those routes were not built to carry everyone’s traffic at once, so they become congested, especially in the evening. Speed tests may look fine in the morning and collapse at night.

3. Latency rises

Rerouted traffic often travels longer paths, sometimes around entire regions. That adds delay, or latency. You notice it as lag in online games, echo and freezing in video calls, and slow-starting web pages. During the September 2025 Red Sea cuts, Microsoft warned of increased latency for traffic passing through the Middle East.

4. International sites slow down more than local ones

Content stored on servers outside Pakistan suffers most. Popular YouTube videos, Netflix titles and some social media content are cached on servers inside Pakistani ISPs, so they may still load reasonably well. Less popular content, cloud tools, foreign websites and file uploads to international clients slow down the most.

5. Some ISPs suffer more than others

Each ISP buys bandwidth on different cables. If your provider relies heavily on the damaged system, your connection may crawl while a friend on another network barely notices. In past outages, users commented that PTCL-dependent services felt the impact more when the cables PTCL relies on were damaged.

6. WhatsApp media and video calls fail first

Messaging apps keep text flowing even on weak links, but images, videos and voice notes need more bandwidth and often fail to download. Video calls drop to low quality or disconnect. These are usually the first signs of a cable problem for ordinary users.

7. VPNs and business tools get hit hard

VPNs route traffic abroad and bypass local caches, so they suffer more during a cut. Businesses that depend on cloud platforms, international payment gateways or remote servers feel the slowdown sharply, which is why IT exporters and freelancers raise the loudest alarms during outages.

Major Undersea Cable Cuts in Pakistan’s Recent History

The incidents below are the ones Pakistani users felt most. They are listed newest first.

The 2024 slowdown in context

The 2024 episode was the longest and most damaging in recent memory. Speeds reportedly fell by up to 30 to 40 percent at the worst point. PTA’s public statements on the cable faults came alongside a heated debate about a national firewall being installed at the same time, and businesses argued that both factors played a role. Reports also noted that the cable connecting Pakistan had experienced nine major failures between 2021 and 2024.

The September 2025 Red Sea cuts

On September 6, 2025, multiple cables were severed near Jeddah. Internet monitoring group NetBlocks said the failures affecting SMW4 and IMEWE had degraded connectivity in Pakistan and India, and PTCL acknowledged the cuts, as AP reported via Broadband Breakfast. The cause was not immediately clear. Past Red Sea incidents have been linked to ships’ anchors, while concerns were also raised about attacks connected to the regional conflict. Yemen’s Houthi movement denied involvement.

Lessons from the record

Two things stand out. SMW4 appears in almost every major incident, which shows how much Pakistan has relied on a handful of ageing systems. And many breaks happen far away, in the Red Sea or Mediterranean, which means Pakistan’s internet speed depends heavily on security and shipping conditions in other regions.

Sabotage, Negligence and Illegal Activity Behind Undersea Cable Cuts

Most cable faults are accidents. But some recent incidents involve conflict, negligence or suspected criminal acts, and they show why undersea cable cuts in Pakistan are increasingly a security issue, not just a technical one.

The Red Sea in 2024: an attacked ship and a dragged anchor

In February 2024, several Red Sea cables, including AAE-1, Seacom and EIG, were damaged. Investigators and officials widely linked the damage to the cargo ship Rubymar, which was struck in an attack attributed to Yemen’s Houthis and was then abandoned. As the stricken ship drifted, its anchor is believed to have dragged across the seabed and cut the cables before the vessel sank. Whatever the exact chain of events, attacking civilian shipping is illegal under international law, and in this case the consequences reached internet users thousands of kilometers away, including in Pakistan.

The Baltic Sea: criminal charges after a cable cut

In December 2024, a power cable and several telecom cables between Finland and Estonia were damaged. Finnish authorities seized the tanker Eagle S, which was suspected of dragging its anchor across the seabed for a long distance. Prosecutors later brought criminal charges against the ship’s captain and senior officers. The case raised difficult questions about jurisdiction over incidents in international waters and how to prove intent. It is one of the clearest examples of cable damage being treated as a potential crime, and it pushed Baltic countries to increase naval patrols around critical cables.

Why proving sabotage is hard

Cables lie deep under water, often outside any country’s territorial waters. Evidence can be thin, ships may sail under flags of convenience, and accidental anchor drags look similar to deliberate ones. That makes accountability slow and uncertain, which in turn means countries like Pakistan must focus on resilience rather than relying on prosecution.

Closer to home: theft and vandalism of local cables

Pakistan’s own network also suffers from criminal damage. In June 2024, ARY News reported that Karachi police arrested a gang of 10 people for stealing underground PTCL cables, recovering cable worth around Rs 2.5 million. Smaller theft cases appear in other cities too. These thefts mostly hit copper lines rather than international cables, but they show the same pattern: physical infrastructure that everyone depends on is surprisingly easy to damage.

Unlicensed operators and illegal gateways

Some illegal operators bypass Pakistan’s licensed international gateways altogether. PTA and FIA have raided illegal internet providers and grey telecom exchanges in several cities, seizing equipment and arresting operators. These setups do not cut cables, but they reduce the revenue that funds legitimate capacity and can leave customers disconnected without warning when they are shut down.

Reducing the Impact of Undersea Cable Cuts in Pakistan

The long-term fix is not to stop every cable from breaking. That is impossible. The fix is to have enough spare routes that one break barely matters.

New submarine cables

Pakistan added three new systems in roughly a year:

• 2Africa, landed by Transworld Associates in early 2025. It is designed to be one of the world’s largest subsea systems, with 46 landing points across 33 countries.
• Africa-1, landed by PTCL at Sea View, Karachi in February 2025, a 10,000-kilometer system linking Pakistan with the Gulf, East Africa and Europe.
• SEA-ME-WE 6, landed at Hawkes Bay in late 2025 and expected to add about 4 Tbps of initial capacity, nearly 40% more than Pakistan’s earlier total.

These cables were expected to come into service in 2026, but several have faced delays linked to Red Sea security conditions. Once fully active, they should make individual cable cuts far less painful.

Route diversity

Adding cables only helps if they take different paths. Systems like PEACE and 2Africa include routes around Africa and through different landing points, which reduces Pakistan’s dependence on the narrow Red Sea corridor. Terrestrial fiber links to China through the north provide another non-maritime route, though on a smaller scale.

Local data centers and caching

The more content is stored inside Pakistan, the less a cable cut matters for everyday browsing. Transworld announced a Tier III data center in Karachi connected directly to major subsea systems, and large content providers already run cache servers inside Pakistani ISP networks. Growth in local cloud and data center capacity means streaming, social media and some business apps can keep working during international outages.

Faster rerouting and reporting

When cables fail, operators now reroute traffic more quickly and buy emergency capacity on working cables. In January 2025, the state minister for IT said about 80% of the shortfall from an AAE-1 fault had been restored by moving traffic to two other cables. PTA has also said that cable faults are to be reported to it within two hours, with public statements for significant incidents.

What still needs work

Critics, including internet industry associations, argue that more competition in international gateways, faster licensing and better protection of cable landing stations are still needed. Regional cooperation on Red Sea security and repair access will also matter, since that corridor sits outside Pakistan’s control.

What You Can Do During Undersea Cable Cuts in Pakistan

You cannot fix undersea cable cuts in Pakistan from your living room, but you can reduce the damage to your work and daily life.

Confirm it is a cable problem

1. Check PTA’s and your ISP’s official social media accounts or websites for announcements.
2. Look at whether friends on different networks are also slow.
3. Notice the pattern. If local sites and popular videos work but foreign sites, uploads and video calls struggle, an international capacity problem is likely.

If everyone is slow across ISPs at the same time, there is little point restarting your router repeatedly or upgrading your package.

Tips for everyday users

• Lower video quality on YouTube and streaming apps to keep playback smooth.
• Turn off VPNs unless you need them, since they bypass local caches.
• Download in off-peak hours, such as early morning, when remaining capacity is less congested.
• Use text instead of voice notes and video for urgent messages.
• Pause automatic cloud backups and large app updates until speeds recover.

Tips for freelancers and remote workers

• Keep a second connection on a different provider, ideally one that buys bandwidth on different cables. A mobile 4G or 5G backup is often enough.
• Tell clients early about regional outages, and share links to news reports so they understand it is not personal unreliability.
• Schedule large uploads for off-peak hours and use upload tools that resume after interruptions.
• Prefer audio calls over video when connections are unstable.

Tips for businesses

• Use two ISPs from different backbone groups with automatic failover.
• Host critical applications in local data centers or cloud regions with Pakistani presence where possible.
• Build outage plans for customer-facing services, such as offline payment options or status updates.
• Keep in contact with your ISP account manager for updates on rerouting and expected repair times.

Avoid risky shortcuts

During long outages, offers for “special” bandwidth from unlicensed sellers and “free fast VPN” apps tend to appear. Stick with licensed providers and trusted apps. Illegal connections can be shut down without notice, and unknown VPN apps can steal data or install malware.

Conclusion

Undersea cable cuts in Pakistan slow the entire country because almost all international traffic depends on a small group of submarine cables landing in Karachi, many of which pass through the crowded and conflict-affected Red Sea. When one breaks, capacity drops, the remaining routes congest, latency rises, international sites and video calls suffer most, and users of certain ISPs feel it far more than others. The record is clear, from the 2008 Mediterranean cuts and the long 2024 SMW4 and AAE-1 faults to the September 2025 cuts near Jeddah. While most breaks come from anchors, fishing, earthquakes and ageing equipment, recent cases such as the Rubymar’s dragged anchor after an attack in the Red Sea and the Eagle S charges in the Baltic show that conflict, negligence and possible sabotage are part of the picture, alongside local cable theft at home. New systems like 2Africa, Africa-1 and SEA-ME-WE 6, more route diversity and local data centers should make future undersea cable cuts in Pakistan less painful, and until then, a backup connection, smart usage habits and patience during repairs are the best protection for users and businesses alike.