Thousands of mobile phone towers go offline in Pakistan after power outage - source - Reuters

KARACHI, Pakistan, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Thousands of mobile telephone towers person gone offline crossed Pakistan owed to a nationwide powerfulness chopped connected Monday, an manufacture root told Reuters, raising the spectre of a telecommunications blackout successful parts of the state of 220 cardinal people.

Pakistan's nationalist grid suffered a large outage connected Monday leaving millions of radical without electricity. The disruption has begun hitting the country's astir 40,000 telecommunication towers.

The telecommunication manufacture root raised fears that if powerfulness is not switched backmost connected soon, it could pb to a communications blackout arsenic mobile telephone towers tally retired of backup substance and batteries.

He added that work degradation had begun successful immoderate parts of the state arsenic immoderate towers went offline.

Some societal media users successful Pakistan complained of mobile signals disappearing successful large cities of the country, including Islamabad. "No signals astatine the Karakoram apartments, Diplomatic Enclave, Islamabad," erstwhile Senator Sehar Kamran said connected Twitter.

Separately, the country's telecommunication regulator, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), warned of outages.

"Due to state wide powerfulness outage, users whitethorn look work disruptions," PTA said successful a statement.

It said operators person been instructed to pass subscribers and to bash their utmost to refuel backup powerfulness connected the maximum fig of mobile operation sites.

A spokesperson for PTA did not respond to a question connected however galore of Pakistan's telecommunication towers were offline.

Global net monitoring radical Netblocks said connected Twitter that metrics showed telecommunications successful astir regions of the state had been impacted by the country-wide powerfulness outage and that determination had been a important diminution successful net access.

Pakistan has 194 cardinal cellular subscribers and 124 cardinal broadband subscribers, according to PTA.

There are 4 large telecommunication providers, including Jazz, owned by Netherlands-based Veon, Zong, owned by China Mobile, and Norway-based Telenor.

Reporting by Gibran Peshimam and Ariba Shahid, penning by Shivam Patel; Editing by Hugh Lawson

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