SMW4 Cable System (Segment 4) Kicks Bucket

At approx. 11:30am today, the SMW4 Segment 4 Sumbarine Cable went down due to a fiber cut between Marseille and Palermo due to which the Internet connectivity in Pakistan is severely affected.

At this moment, TWA1 customers are suffering the most. PTCL has switched it's Internet traffic from SMW4 to SMW3.

Let's hope that this fault is repaired soon since degraded Internet service cripples internet for business.

Update A ship has left Italy for repairing the fault. However, timelines indicated by SMW4 are anywhere from twelve to fourteen days!!

Update Ship will reach site on 5th of February, 2008 and it will take three to four days to repair the damaged cable. So you can kiss the 'good quality' internet goodbye for another ten days.

Update PTCL is acquiring additional STM-4 and four STM1s on SMW3 which should be operational by evening today (Thursday). This will up the total IP bandwidth on SMW3 to about 4.6Gbps. Usually, PTCL's peak load is around 3.6 Gbps to 3.8Gbps so I guess once this upgrade is in place, the situation will improve significantly.

Official Update
Subject: CASE116815 | Subsea cable cut on FEA SS-2 | Update - 4


Ladies/Gentlemen,

Marine have confirmed a sub sea cable cut at 8.3 kms, from the Alexandria beach manhole, in a similar location to the reported SMW-4 cut. Marine has contacted it's marine repair agency and is progressing application of permits for the repair.

Current estimate is that the ship will reach the repair ground on Tuesday 5th Feb with the repair commencing on Wednesday 6th Feb. FLAG are sharing the repair ship with SMW-4, the actual repair is anticipated to be difficult with many old cables in the area. It is expected that the repair of both SMW-4 and FEA could take up to a week to complete.

Pre Plan Restoration R18 was completed yesterday, R19 is being completed manually by the GNOC and is expected to be complete by 11:00 GMT today.