“The slowdown in internet speeds in the country is due to a fault in an undersea cable, which will be fixed by August 28,” Rehman said, according to the PTI news agency. He also denied claims that a government firewall was to blame for the outages.
Opposition parties and business groups have previously accused the government of using “firewalls” to monitor internet traffic and deliberately slow down service. The government has denied the allegations and blamed the slowdown on a necessary upgrade to its web management system.
“In my opinion, the internet should not be slowed down due to upgrades,” he said, adding that the internet outage had caused a loss of Rs 300 crore to the telecom sector.
Pakistan’s Internet Problem
For weeks, allegations have been floating around that the government is deliberately slowing down internet speeds to censor criticism, especially from the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.
Internet users claim that they are experiencing issues sending and downloading media and voice notes via WhatsApp when connected to mobile data.
Rehman also addressed concerns over the prolonged ban on social media platform X, saying he did not have any further information on the matter. He clarified that VPNs are not blocked in Pakistan.
Earlier, businesses and internet service providers (ISPs) had also alleged that the government’s attempt to monitor internet traffic through a “firewall” was causing slowdowns in digital services and resulting in financial losses, according to PTI.
