KARACHI, April 10: Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) on Thursday denied that the recent incident of cable cut had caused total halt of all the ISPs’ operation to outside world communication.

Explaining the situation, a PTCL release said that the company had satellite links at Karachi and Islamabad, SMC link up to the United Arab Emirates and microwave link up to Iran as alternative media for all telecommunication facilities.

It said that the ISPs faced only slow-browsing and congestion on international routes during the trouble period, i.e. seven-and-a-half hours, on April 8.

The PTCL clarified that there was no television link operation on this cable system and a number of ISPs and IPLCs were working over satellite media. The 155Mbps link of ITI region of PTCL, which largely provides connectivity to ISPs is backed-up by satellite links of 34MB symmetric and 34MB asymmetric.

All other telecon facilities are shared by satellite, SMC and SMW-3 system. The complete outage of telecon facilities, due to this breakdown, can never occur, it said.

National Police Foundation, which is responsible for the protection of land cable route of SMW-3 optical fibre link, has lodged a complaint with Pak Colony police station regarding damage to the SMW-3 cable, the release added. — PPI