The internet service in the country has been slow down from almost two years, but form two day it’s not working properly because of the ongoing strike of Pakistan Tehreek-e-insaf in the D-squire Islamabad. This situation is very harmful for the online workers and businessman’s those are relying on internet service. While the government official had said in deferent platforms that, the firewall has been installed of the national security or counter the digital terrorism.
At the government point of view it’s the responsibility of relevant authorities to monitor such digital culprits and terrorists, those involves in the activities against the state but to shut down the entire internet service all over the country, is not justice to those common citizens who are not involved in such activities.
According to technical experts and critics, Pakistan is not a single state that is facing digital terrorism or activities against the national interest. We have a good example of Middle Eastern countries and neighbor, Iran that also impose some sanctions on the use of internet but they always applied smart lock down to counter the specific areas and issues.
Unfortunately in our country the common public is facing the issue of slow internet and partly complete shutdown that needs to manage with smart lock down to avoid full shutdown in the country.
According to the main stream media the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) has surged dramatically across Pakistan in the wake of stricter social media restrictions.
According to Top10VPN, an independent platform specializing in VPN reviews, the demand for these services in Pakistan rose by an astonishing 102% on November 25, compared to the average daily demand over the previous 28 days.
This significant spike highlights a growing reliance on VPNs to circumvent increasing digital restrictions.
VPN demand escalated further on November 26, reaching 213% above the baseline.
The spike came amid reports that authorities had restricted WhatsApp media sharing in advance of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) protest demonstrations.
WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and other platforms are facing disruptions in Pakistan, showed Downdetector.com, a website that reports when there’s a disruption on social platforms or websites.
Citizens have expressed frustration over the disruptions as there’s no official version yet as to why the access is restricted. The social platforms work better when they’re accessed after activating VPNs.
The government had confirmed that they planned on disrupting internet services in areas with security concerns, but there was no comment about social media platforms.
As people are accessing social media platforms via VPN, they’re also facing another hurdle: slow Internet.
Internet services have been disrupted in several cities across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, including Multan, Rajanpur, Gujrat, and Dera Ghazi Khan. Residents in these areas are reporting difficulties in accessing online services.
The above situation mostly damage the online banking, exchange companies and amazon online business these user’s losses are reached to billions of Pakistani rupees and another hand common users of internet including social media platforms X, Facebook, Instagram YouTube WhatsApp and LinkedIn.
So now it’s the responsibility of the relevant authorities to tackle that issue. The complete lock down of the internet service is not the remedy for that problem, but that is damaging the interest of common citizens in the state. Therefor the high up’s should take action against the complete shutdown of internet service, for that purpose the authorities needs to update their system for smart lock down, that in strike like D-squire Islamabad-the area should be lock down separately.
If the government could success to install such a system along with firewall that will be a great achievement, hoped after the Islamabad chaos of PTI, the government will think seriously about that issue.
