The interconnectivity of digital technologies has grown with their concentrated reliance on a small number of cloud platforms and providers maintaining databases and ensuring smooth connectivity. This infrastructure revealed its vulnerabilities in recent days when internet disruption was narrowed down to Amazon’s Web Services (AWS), a platform which hosts and caters to a vast array of popular applications- notably, Reddit and Snapchat- and other digital platforms. Server issues associated with a technical API update caused issues for all these platforms. According to DownDetector, a website which tracks internet disruptions based on user reports, over 11 million disruptions were reported around the world due to these outages. 

Meanwhile, as the AWS servers recovered over the last two days, Pakistani users once again expressed frustrations over low-quality service and slow internet speeds on certain ISPs. While no official cause has been identified by the Ministry of IT, digital expert Habibullah Khan claimed that the disruption was due to faults in the PEACE cable, a submarine cable connecting Asia, Africa, and Europe.