Following yesterday’s internet outage, where internet services were temporarily suspended prior to the protests organized by ousted Prime Minister Imran Khan, netizens have been debating the cause for the countrywide issue- speculating between network issues or pre-planned closure by the government.
The incident came amidst the government’s attempts to control rallies and a long march to the capital organized by former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
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As per reports, the country faced disruptions to service from multiple providers across Pakistan after 5 p.m. local time Wednesday. Service was restored after approximately two hours following a backlash from subscribers, and some internet providers claiming an issue in the country’s web filtering infrastructure.
ℹ️ Update: Internet service has been restored across networks in #Pakistan after a disruption that limited communications amid anti-government protests; providers have claimed a problem in the web filtering system; incident duration ~2 hours
📰 Report: https://t.co/FVFwtxUzLp pic.twitter.com/84g002b6AH
— NetBlocks (@netblocks) May 25, 2022
While Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) issued a clarification stating that there was no planned shut down of the internet in the country, explaining it as being ” a minor issue in the quality of its service”, Twitter did not seem to buy that reason and had its own explanations for the problem.
The thing to note is that the government tried to bring down internet services yesterday but got cold feet as soon as the news broke. #Transworld
— سمن عباسیSaman Abbasi समन (@samanabbasi1) May 26, 2022
PTA press release on internet outage: “There is neither any closure of Internet in the country nor any such decision, as wrongly reported by some media outlets. One of the companies Transworld has slight degradation issue, which is being checked. Will update further.”
— Waseem Abbasi (@Wabbasi007) May 25, 2022
PTCL and Transworld are only tier 2 companies in Pak that provide bandwidth to other internet companies in Pakistan, if they decide to close down thr operations NO INTERNET IN PAKISTAN!
— Hassan Munir (@hassanmunir39) May 25, 2022
Closing down the internet.
This is going to be the most dangerous act as to do something behind any live coverage.
Be prepared Pakistan.#RanaSanaUllah #LongMarch #AzadiMarchPTI #Lahore #internet #transworld— Muhammad Arslan Khan (Mak) (@NBbyMak) May 25, 2022
