'Telecom services restored in Pakistan after flood disruptions'

Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication, Shaza Fatima Khawaja, said on Thursday that telecom infrastructure in Pakistan was severely affected due to recent floods, with several towers going down.

Talking to a private news channel, she said that our telecom teams have been on the ground working to stabilize the situation, and so far, 90 per cent of the towers have been recovered.

“PTA, USF and NTC teams played an important role in managing this crisis,” Shaza Fatima added.

She said that the slowdown in internet services was linked to damage to submarine cables near Jeddah in the Red Sea.

“Five cables were simultaneously damaged, four around September 6 and 7, and one earlier,” she added.

She said that the impact on Pakistan was 1.3 terabytes, but due to redundancy measures, the net effect was limited to about 400 gigabytes.

Meanwhile, the Power Division said that electricity restoration efforts are underway in Pakistan floods hit areas, with significant progress reported.

According to the latest update, a total of 537 feeders were affected, out of which 294 have been fully restored and 238 partially restored.

Of the 1.73 million consumers impacted, power has been restored to 1.446 million, while the remaining 283,000 consumers are being prioritized for immediate restoration.

According to the company-wise breakup, 28 grids and 81 feeders were affected in FESCO.

Power has been fully restored on 27 feeders and partially on 53. Over 200,000 consumers were impacted, with supply restored to 111,000. The remaining 90,000 consumers are expected to regain power by September 14.