KARACHI, June 11: Over one and a half million Internet users across the country will be facing difficulties for a couple of days as the web-based communication between Pakistan and the rest of the world has been affected due to a cable fault in the Red Sea, it is learnt.
According to the source, the South Asia Middle East Western Europe (SAMEWE) Optic Fibre submarine cable developed the fault in the region between Djabuti (Africa) and Suez Canal (Egypt) connecting the Red Sea with the Mediterranean Sea on Tuesday afternoon.
The sources said that though the repair work had already been started, it might take a while to complete and the normal service could resume by the weekend.
The sources said that the Internet users, being served by over 145 Internet Service Providers (ISPs), would face difficulties in logging on to the net due to the congestion and those lucky few who do get connected after much ado would not attain the usual speed.
The sources said that e-commerce would also be affected as the exporters would not be able to communicate timely with their overseas principals. They would have to resort to the normal telephone system that costs many times more than the Internet.
They said that the online banking, software houses, the newspapers, corporate sector, multinational business houses, etc which update their websites frequently would be the worst sufferers as the slow speed would not enable them to update their pages accordingly.
They said that the modem connection speed of the local ISPs was already slow — around 33 kilo bytes per second — while the usual modem speed in the developed world was well beyond that speed.
The fault is bound to further lower the speed, putting a strain on the pockets of the Internet users and fattening the coffers of the ISPs.
Responding to the Dawn queries on telephone from Karachi, the PTCL General Manager at Islamabad, Sultan Ahmad Hussain said that though alternate arrangements had been made, the Internet users would face some difficulties in logging in and those who do get connected would not get the normal speed.
He said that the fault had developed on Tuesday afternoon and the repairs started soon afterwards that was expected to be completed by Thursday.
Meanwhile, a large number of Internet users called the Dawn offices, most complaining they were unable to log in, while some stating that though they had had the luck to get connected, they experienced a pretty slow download speed.
While the Internet users were facing difficulties due to the slow speed none of the ISP helpline operators whom Dawn approached did even know about the difficulties their users were facing. One of them, however, did agree that he was receiving the complaints of the users that the download speed was slow, but that is a usual complaint, he added sarcastically.
The Internet users said that the speed of local ISPs was already slow as the ISPs in their bid to make quick bucks registered more customers than their infrastructure equipment could handle which affected the download speed, and with this fault the download speed would become even slower.
The cyber cafes, on the other hand, would have a windfall profit as their customers would be spending more time logged on and paying extra amount for the additional time spent while surfing the net.