PM Shehbaz urged to intervene as sluggish internet bleeds economy

• Telecom operators fear country may lose Rs12 billion annually if urgent measures not taken
• PTA says two out of seven submarine cables faulty; IT minister, PTA chief skips Senate meeting

ISLAMABAD: As the Telecom Operators Association sought the intervention of the prime minister to fix disruptions in the internet which may cost the national economy billions of rupees, the IT minister and the chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) skipped the meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Information Technology over the internet issue.

Over the past few weeks, internet users across Pakistan have reported significant drops in speed and disruptions to social media platforms, like Facebook and WhatsApp. The business community and internet service providers (ISPs) have accused the government of intentionally slowing down digital services due to the installation of a “firewall”, but the government has blamed these problems on VPNs. It later attributed the slowdown to a fault in submarine cables.

Doug Madory, an internet expert, did endorse the claim regarding the fault in the submarine cables, saying the reduced internet capacity for Pakistan was due to a fault in submarine cables. “We can see that PTCL (AS17557) lost transit from TMnet (AS4788), NTT (AS2914) and Lumen (AS3356) as a result of the SMW-4 failure on June 17th. It recently regained Lumen, but these losses would indeed result in reduced capacity for #Pakistan,” Mr Madory tweeted on Wednesday evening.

Though the damaged cables may affect the internet speed and it has not happened for the first time, the intermittent outage of social media applications for longer periods is unprecedented.

PM asked for help

In reference to these disruptions, the telecom operators sought the intervention of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif through a letter on Thursday, saying the sluggish internet could cost Pakistan almost Rs12 billion annually. According to the association, the nationwide slowdown will cause significant and long-lasting economic repercussions if not identified and rectified immediately.

They also expressed their willingness to participate in a dialogue and assist the relevant quarters in finding solutions to improve the current internet slowdown situation. The letter to the premier stated that due to the reduction in internet traffic, the country would suffer losses to the tune of Rs12 billion annually, adding that daily internet traffic in the country had reduced by approximately 6,400 terabytes.

“This will significantly increase financial stress on the telecom sector. Incidentally, the corresponding loss to exchequer due to reduced revenue of the telecom sector will be in excess of Rs3 billion annually,” it stated. The letter pointed out that the disruptions in internet speed would have an adverse impact on foreign direct investments, the blue-collar workforce, the information technology industry, freelancers as well as the GDP.

‘Fault in submarine cables’

In a press release, the PTA announced that the internet slowdown and degradation of services was “due to [a] fault in two of the seven international submarine cables connecting Pakistan internationally”. According to the authority, “The AAE-1 cable has experienced a 250G outage due to rerouting between Iran and Qatar; similarly, SMW-4 cable (1.5T) has been out of service due to faults near Karachi.”

The PTA claimed that the operators were re-routing traffic to other available cables to minimise the impact on internet users in Pakistan, adding that the relevant teams were fixing the fault.

VPNs blamed again

During a meeting of the Senate panel on IT, the government once again attributed the slowdown to faulty submarine cables and the increasing use of VPNs. The explanations came during a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunication as lawmakers criticised internet disruptions and sought explanation from relevant quarters.

Headed by Chairperson Senator Palwasha Khan, the panel highlighted several issues, including the absence of the IT minister as well as the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) head. The meeting postponed the agenda related to the long-distance and international (LDI) operators due to the non-participation of relevant authorities. The next meeting will address these issues.

The committee also questioned the ban on ‘X’ (formerly Twitter), which was reportedly implemented on the Ministry of Interior’s directive.

The session began with a briefing on the operations and performance of the Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) and the Electronic Certification Accreditation Council. It was noted that the PSEB, established as a Private Software Export Board in 1995, operated under a seven-member board of directors.

Presently, there are 26,000 IT companies registered with the SECP. Despite the global IT market’s value of $5 trillion, Pakistan’s share was less than 0.04pc whereas the IT products accounted for 24pc of IT growth this year, matching last year’s growth rate.

The committee was informed that 54pc of Pakistan’s IT exports were to the US, 21pc to Europe, 10pc to Gulf countries, and 14pc to the Asia Pacific region. There were currently 2,124 web design services companies, 452 network security firms, and 616 data storage and management companies.

Additionally, Pakistan had 3,463 IT consulting firms, 870 social media consulting companies, 465 email marketing firms, 664 IT help desk companies, 940 cloud service providers, and 81 repair service companies.

Similarly, the committee also took exception to the recruitment of the IT ministry’s secretary on a contractual basis rather than their appointment from the federal service pool.

Published in Dawn, August 23rd, 2024