In response to widespread internet disruptions across Pakistan, the government has initiated the registration of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) through a streamlined “one-window” operation.
This initiative, aimed at ensuring uninterrupted online activities for businesses, freelancers, and foreign missions, comes as the nation grapples with prolonged internet slowdowns and social media blockages.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), in collaboration with the Ministry of Information Technology (MoIT), Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB), and the Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA), announced that VPNs are now being registered through a simplified process on the PTA and PSEB websites. Since 2020, over 20,000 IPs have been registered for VPN use, according to the PTA’s statement.
PTA said that users will need to register their VPN here for uninterrupted and secure online business.
This move is seen as essential by many in Pakistan’s burgeoning IT sector, which has faced severe challenges due to the ongoing internet disruptions. For the past six months, access to the social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) has been blocked, and internet speeds have reportedly slowed by up to 40%, severely affecting online communication, including the transmission of documents, images, and voice notes via WhatsApp, according to IT associations.
The disruption, which has led to significant public and business frustration, has been linked to what digital rights experts believe is the government’s testing of a firewall system. This firewall, while intended to monitor network traffic for security purposes, raises concerns about increased state control over online spaces. However, the government has denied these claims.
State Minister for IT and Telecommunication, Shaza Fatima Khawaja, has refuted reports that the government is deliberately throttling internet speeds or implementing censorship through a firewall. Instead, she cited increased VPN usage and technical faults in submarine cables as the primary reasons behind the slowdown. The PTA echoed this, attributing the ongoing internet issues to faults in two of Pakistan’s seven international submarine cables, one of which is expected to be repaired by October 2024.
The internet slowdown and the subsequent VPN registration initiative highlight the challenges facing Pakistan’s IT sector, a critical industry for the country’s economic growth and foreign exchange revenue generation. As the government attempts to navigate these technical and political challenges, industry leaders warn that prolonged disruptions could deepen the country’s digital divide and hamper its economic progress.
The ongoing VPN registration and the broader internet disruptions have raised alarms among digital rights advocates who fear that increased government surveillance could stifle online freedoms and severely impact IT exports.
As Pakistan’s IT industry looks to expand its export capabilities, these developments could have far-reaching implications for the sector’s growth and the country’s overall economic stability. “Without immediate and decisive action, the country risks deeper economic fallout and a prolonged digital divide,” Shahzad Arshad, chairman of the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan, said in a statement this week.