KARACHI, June 28: Pakistan on Tuesday held talks with four states whose telecommunications networks will remain suspended for two hours on Wednesday morning during which a key undersea cable that developed a fault on Monday night will be repaired.

The world’s longest fibre optic link - known as SEA-ME-WE — developed the fault 52 nautical miles (over 96 kilometres) off the coast of Karachi, a senior official of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company (PTCL) confirmed.

The breakdown of telecommunications channels badly hit the 100-odd Internet service providers of the country who lost millions of rupees on Tuesday. Bankers complained they were greatly inconvenienced by the shutdown. Online traders suffered losses as the Karachi Stock Exchange and put up a terse notice on its website saying that it could not be updated on a regular basis.

“India, Djibouti, Oman and the United Arab Emirates are the four countries whose telecommunication channels will be disturbed while the defective portion of the 39,000-kilometre-long cable is repaired,” Mashkoor Hussain, senior executive vice-president (operations) of the PTCL, told Dawn from Islamabad.

He said the 92-party consortium which ran SEA-ME-WE-III had not asked Singtel, the consortium’s operating agent, to fix the faulty cable but had instead contacted a UAE-based company, E-Marine, for the task.

The PTCL official said E-Marine had already dispatched a ship to repair the fault, which could be rectified as early as Wednesday morning.

Pakistan made an initial investment of $35 million in SEA-ME-WE-III in 1999. It pays around $2.5 million as maintenance cost, including repair cost annually. The PTCL has to make no immediate payment to the consortium for the repairs.

“Voice communication is available all over the country. International calls can be made and received. The PTCL has asked licencees of long distance and international services and cellphone operators to land traffic on satellite. Similarly, an old cable laid between Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates in 1986 had been pressed into service to overcome the current crisis,” he said.

The PTCL official conceded that there was considerable congestion in the country’s Internet network which currently employs three 34-megabit satellite links — two in Karachi and one in Islamabad.

However, the secretary-general of the Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan, V.A. Abidi, said PTCL officials claiming that Internet services were not badly affected were being economical with the truth.