The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said on Tuesday that a fault in Pakistan Telecommunications Company Ltd’s (PTCL) optic fibre cable, that had caused disruption in internet services in some areas last night, had been fixed.

“Technical fault/cut in PTCL optic fibre network due to unprecedented floods, which impacted internet services at midnight at some locations, was repaired & restored within one hour,” it tweeted.

“All #internet services are working normally.”

Sources in the company earlier told Dawn the internet fibre cables suffered damage due to heavy rains in Sukkur areas. They said rainwater had entered the PTCL exchange causing an electricity short-circuit.

Social media users took to Twitter last night, commenting on the outage and questioning whether others were facing the issue as well, with #internetdown trending on the platform till today afternoon.

Many users said their GSM connections weren’t working either, complaining that they were not able to make or receive calls on their mobile phones.

NetBlocks, an organisation that tracks internet outages, tweeted that multiple providers including PTCL faced issues with “real-time network data showing connectivity at 38 per cent of ordinary levels”.

The outage came a day after YouTube service in parts of the country faced disruptions on Sunday during a speech of PTI Chairman Imran Khan, whose live addresses were banned on TV channels the previous night by the electronic media regulator.

The YouTube outage in the country was also confirmed by NetBlocks.

Last week, internet outages were reported in some regions, including major urban centres, that the PTCL had attributed to a technical fault in the fibre optic cable. The fault was later repaired and internet services restored.

PTCL’s problems had a knock-on effect on other service providers, including on cellular data.

According to the PTA, there are 116 million users of 3G and 4G services and 119 million broadband subscribers.