Pakistan’s telecom industry has warned that internet and mobile services could be shut down as “prolonged power outages” and high fuel costs have made it almost impossible to cope amid a deepening economic crisis.

In a letter to the federal Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the country’s leading telecom operators said they are facing a “massive challenge” to maintain the services due to “unplanned and prolonged load-shedding nationwide”.

“Despite having backup power available in the form of generators and batteries, cellular operators are finding it almost impossible to cope with the quantum of these power outages that are beyond our dimensioned backup capacity,” mobile operators Jazz, Telenor, PTCL and Ufone said in the letter.