Internet services have been fully restored in Pakistan following a significant disruption that affected multiple cities, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) confirmed on July 31. While the exact cause of the disruption remains under investigation, the PTA and Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd (PTCL) have addressed the technical fault that led to the nationwide outage.

Early July 31, PTCL reported a data outage affecting its network in various cities, disrupting connectivity for a substantial portion of the day. This outage impacted not only PTCL’s direct customers but also those internet service providers relying on PTCL’s bandwidth, representing about 70% of the internet services in the country.

PTA spokesperson Malahat Obaid cited a fault in the PTCL system as the preliminary cause, noting that internet and broadband users might have experienced degraded services during the disruption. The authority has been actively monitoring the situation to ensure the stability of internet services.

The internet connectivity issues were first reported by Netblocks, a global internet monitor, which described the event as a “nation-scale disruption.” According to their data, national connectivity plummeted to 24% of ordinary levels. Downdetector also recorded a significant spike in outage reports starting around 1:30 pm, with the highest complaints coming from major cities like Karachi, Rawalpindi, and Lahore. The majority of these reports described disruptions in internet services, with 23% of complaints indicating a total blackout.