Social media websites including Twitter and YouTube have started to get restored after being suspended last week. However, an official at the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) stated that a formal notification from the Ministry of Interior, on whose orders the websites were blocked, is still awaited.
On May 9, the Ministry of Interior directed PTA to suspend mobile broadband services along with social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. Mobile broadband services were restored on Friday, but social media websites continued to remain restricted.
“There is no direction from the interior ministry to restore social media services,” a well-placed source in the PTA told Business Recorder on Monday.
Ibrahim Amin, Chairman Pakistan Freelancers Association (PAFLA), told Business Recorder that frequent suspension of internet and social media was denting Pakistan’s IT ecosystem.
“Many apps utilise cloud services. When the internet is blocked, the bandwidth allocated by cloud servers transfer to other regions,” he said. “Pakistan is a significant consumer of data. When the service is switched back on, it is unlikely that the servers will give as much bandwidth as before the suspension.
“That might be a contributor to ongoing deteriorated internet services.
“Following the disruption of internet, VPN usage in Pakistan spiked. This makes servers respond to pings from other regions, and makes allocations more difficult,” he added.
An official from the IT sector criticised the government for using social media through VPN, saying “it kills the reason to ban social media”.
“Even the prime minister has been tweeting regularly. It means the people in the government are using VPN,” the source said. “I think the government’s decision to ban social media is doing more harm than good.”