KARACHI — Internet connectivity across Karachi returned to normal early Friday morning after a night of widespread disruptions that left thousands of users struggling to access key online services.
The disruption began around 10 p.m. Thursday, affecting major local internet providers including PTCL and Stormfiber. Users also reported problems connecting to popular global platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram, and YouTube, sparking frustration across the city.
According to Downdetector, the issue caused varying levels of disruption from slow browsing speeds to complete service blackouts that lasted several hours. Reports of connectivity problems peaked between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. before gradually declining toward midnight.
“I thought it was just my Wi-Fi acting up, but then everyone in my area started complaining too,” said a Stormfiber user from Gulshan-e-Iqbal. “It was extremely slow for a few hours, but thankfully it’s fine now.”
By midnight, most users began noticing improvements, and full restoration was confirmed by early Friday morning.
While PTCL claimed that its network had remained stable throughout the night, Stormfiber acknowledged that a temporary fault had affected its services. In a brief statement, the company said a “sudden disruption” occurred with one of its upstream providers but was quickly resolved through coordination with technical partners.
During the outage, WhatsApp users faced message delivery failures, frequent disconnections, and login errors, while Instagram and YouTube experienced intermittent loading issues.
By dawn, connectivity across all major networks had stabilized, and no long-term technical damage was reported. However, the brief blackout once again raised concerns among users about the resilience of Pakistan’s digital infrastructure and the need for more robust backup systems during network interruptions.
