Slowdown enigma

Internet slowdown seems to be a new-normal in Pakistan. Perhaps, owing to the government's inability to retain its political narrative versus an assertive opposition, it believes in clamping down on the internet in a bizarre attempt to scuttle dissemination of information in real-time. This flawed strategy, however, has proved to be counter-productive and is not only impacting the national life but economic growth as well. Moreover, it is toiling when it comes to retaining Pakistan's image abroad as investors and multinational corporations' gurus, who have their business stakes in the county, are sceptical of the technological impediment and keep their fingers crossed. The inaccessibility of social media websites such as 'X', and buffering on the paths of WhatsApp, YouTube and Instagram have also stirred unrest among people who go on to question the credibility of claims of making the country a hub of IT exports as VPNs too are regulated.

A report from Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) was no less than a faux pas for the government, which denied that it had obstructed internet speed over the weekend. Two global online tools negated such claims and went ahead to establish that such disruptions lasted for hours on Sunday, making life impossible for browsers and online businesses hooked up to Google gadgets. These tools use traffic headed to Google services, YouTube, Gmail, etc from a geographic location as the benchmark to determine any abnormality in internet access, and found the dispensation to be on the wrong side of the divide. Statistics compiled by both the tools say that around 52% of the users reported issues in sending messages, 27% about voice notes and 21% about the overall application.

Pakistan has a long way to go, and it cannot live on with the firewall regime if it has to compete for a $1 trillion economy. If the IT export target of $60 billion is to be met, it is mandatory that obstructions are done away with, allowing a proactive business in an era of 5G domain.