KARACHI, July 12: Pakistan Telecommunication Company’s national network developed a fault on Saturday evening, which cut off Karachi from the rest of the world and left thousands of mobile phones inoperative till the filing of this report.

Consumers in many parts of the city could not even make local calls for several hours. Attempts to contact PTCL officials concerned failed.

A duty operator on ‘17’ told Dawn that “some fault” had developed in the system owing to which ‘zero’ could not be dialled. As a result, Karachi’s link with the rest of the world was cut off.

The duty operator had no knowledge of the nature of the fault, which, he said, was being rectified.

When pressed, he said perhaps there was some problem with the satellite link.