Debunking Myths About Undersea Internet Cable Repairs: Lessons from Pakistan’s PTCL Slowdown

On October 14, 2025, Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) has announced that a potential slowdown in internet services across the country will commence. The slowdown is due to scheduled maintenance on one of the undersea cables.

According to multiple reports from reliable sources like Dawn, The Express Tribune, and The News International, the repair work on a faulty repeater in the submarine cable was set to begin around 11 AM Pakistan Standard Time (PST) and could last up to 18 hours.

PTCL^[1] emphasized that while users might experience degraded speeds or intermittent connectivity, services would not be completely down, thanks to traffic rerouting to alternative cables.

Events like these quickly fuel online speculation and myths about the fragility of our digital lifeline. However, things may not be as bleak as our chronically online nation makes it out to be.

Internet & Pakistan: A Long, Complicated Relationship

Pakistan, a country of more than 100 million internet users, having slow internet or no internet is nothing unusual. The country has experienced a significant number of internet outages and shutdowns over the past few years, often linked to political events, security concerns, technical faults, and infrastructure issues. These disruptions have ranged from deliberate government-imposed shutdowns to accidental cable damages, impacting millions of users and causing substantial economic losses.

As of October 2025, 5 major outages documented so far, based on news reports and IODA monitoring. In the last five years, they have escalated from a mere 2 per year to more than two dozen in 2025 due to various reasons.

Various independent bodies have documented over 1,500 deliberate internet outages since 2016, with Pakistan ranking among the top 10 most affected countries. Note here that the term “outages” in this context include both full blackouts and partial disruptions (e.g., throttling or social media blocks on various sites and apps).

Myths and Facts About Undersea Cable Repairs

Undersea cable repairs may sound like a lazy excuse, but these are quite frequent given the nature of the expanse of undersea network. Submarine cables, handling over 99% of global data traffic, face routine challenges but are engineered for resilience.

Drawing from industry insights and recent data, let’s explore the reality behind these repairs, how they actually work, why they’re as problematic as it seems, and what we can do for a secure internet accessibility. By the end, we hope to come across facts that even though it might seem like 18 hours is a long time to repair a cable, the system routinely needs that level of attention.

Myth 1: Sharks Eat Undersea Cables… For Fun?

Sharks are BACK!!!
byu/Dev-TechSavvy inPakistaniTech^[2][3][4]

A popular urban legend, amplified by viral videos and memes, claims that sharks, whales, or other sea creatures routinely chomp through cables. Most notably, if we were to conduct a poll on what can be the biggest reason people think of internet outages in Pakistan, it will likely come up as the most common answer.

The reason this myth became popular is because of isolated incidents in the 1980s when sharks were attracted to electrical fields from early copper cables. However, modern fiber-optic cables emit no such fields, making animal interference exceedingly rare. That is not to say that these incidents do not happen, but they now account for less than 1% of faults, as per TeleGeography and the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC).

In truth, the vast majority (about 70%) of damages come from human activities like fishing trawlers dragging anchors or dredging operations in shallow waters. Natural events, such as earthquakes or landslides, make up the rest.

Also, the PTCL slowdown on October 14 is not due to any aquatic attack but a technical repeater fault. These repeaters are devices that boost signals along the cable and can fail from wear, power glitches, or environmental stress. This highlights how myths distract from real culprits: Repeaters, spaced every 50-100 km, are more prone to internal issues than shark bites.

Debunked: Marine attacks are negligible; focus on prevention like cable burial (up to 2 meters in shallow zones) and route planning avoids the real threats. In Pakistan’s case, with cables like SMW-4 landing in Karachi, human and seismic factors in the Arabian Sea are far more relevant causes of cable disruptions.

Myth 2: Repairs Are Quick and Providers Lie to Extend Downtime

A common belief, especially in Pakistan where outages feel frequent, is that cable repairs should wrap up in hours or days, and providers like PTCL exaggerate timelines to cover inefficiencies or ulterior motives. This myth stems from frustration over prolonged disruptions, leading to accusations of deliberate extensions for maintenance profits or censorship.

In truth, while some fixes are swift, the average repair takes about two weeks globally, per SubTel Forum^[5], far from instant. Factors like fault detection (hours to days via optical pulses), mobilizing specialized ships (1-2 weeks for travel), retrieving cables with ROVs (hours), and splicing (up to 16 hours) add up.

PTCL’s October 14 repeater repair, projected at 18 hours, aligns with this for a targeted issue, yet even here, logistics like coordinating teams and testing extend beyond “quick.” Providers don’t generally “lie”; delays arise from real constraints, like a limited global fleet of 62 repair ships or weather in the Arabian Sea. If some entity is involved in such practices, assuming the lie on their part makes things even more complicated than they are, leading to nothing but a spread of fake news.

Debunked: Repairs aren’t exaggerated, they’re complex operations. Transparency, as in PTCL’s case, can clarify the process and explain to the public how rerouting minimizes perceived downtime while work proceeds.

Myth 3: A Single Cable Break Shuts Down the Entire Internet

Panic often ensues with claims that one severed cable could isolate an entire country. This overlooks the redundancy baked into global networks. Most nations connect via multiple cables, Pakistan accesses at least five major systems, including AAE-1, IMEWE, and TW1. When a fault hits, automated systems reroute traffic to backups, often within minutes.

The PTCL maintenance exemplifies this: While repairing the repeater, traffic shifted to alternatives, resulting in slowdowns rather than blackouts. As per media reports, users have previously faced degraded speeds but continued access. Just a few week back,

Debunked: No cable is a single failure point. Software-defined networks and mesh topologies ensure continuity, turning potential disasters into minor inconveniences. For Pakistan, with growing fiber links to China and the Middle East, such resilience is strengthening.

The Bigger Picture: Evolving Repair Practices

Beyond myths, undersea cable repairs are a testament to human ingenuity. With 1.4 million km of cables worldwide, operators like PTCL invest in redundancies, Pakistan’s multiple links ensure minimal disruption during the recent undersea cable work. Future innovations, such as drone-assisted ROVs and AI predictive maintenance, promise even faster fixes.

For instance, Google’s Dunant cable uses self-diagnosing tech to halve detection times. However, in the context of Pakistan, that might take some years down the road.

Consequences of Cable Cuts and Internet Shutdowns

All of this, in no way, means internet provision in Pakistan is at its peak. Previous internet outages have inflicted severe economic losses exceeding $3 billion over the past five years.

These deliberate or otherwise internet disruptions have crippled freelancers, e-commerce, and sectors like telecommunications while deterring foreign investment in the IT industry.

Socially, they exacerbate inequalities by halting online education for millions of students, delaying telemedicine in remote areas, and stifling free expression amid misinformation vacuums, particularly affecting women and rural communities.

Politically, these outages erode public trust, invite international condemnation as human rights violations, and hinder democratic processes, underscoring the urgent need for policy reforms to protect digital infrastructure and foster sustainable growth in a nation increasingly dependent on connectivity.

At the end of the day, myths only create unnecessary fear. The slowdown on October 14 served as a wake-up call about our vulnerabilities, but it also highlighted our resilience.

As our data needs continue to grow, having a well-informed understanding is far more valuable than falling for sensational stories. This way, we can tackle disruptions with facts instead of fiction.