Internet service restored in different cities of Pakistan

F.P. Report

ISLAMABAD: After four days of suspension, Pakistan Telecom Authority (PTA) restored the internet service in different cities of the country on Friday night.

According to reports, the internet service in Lahore, Islamabad, Karachi, Jhang, Toba Tak Singh, and other regions has been restored.

The government suspended the internet service in all the major cities of the country on May 09 after the arrest of Imran Khan in Islamabad.

Twitter, Facebook and Instagram’s services are reportedly down for many users in Pakistan as they are unable to access the popular social media platforms on May 9 evening.

According to the outage-tracking website, Downdetector.com, users are unable to log in to their accounts on all three platforms, meaning they also couldn’t post or view anything.

Downdetector tracks outages by collating status report from a series of sources, including user-submitted errors on its platform. The outage could have affected a larger number of users.

A large number of smartphone users are also complaining about their WhatsApp which is not working both on desktops and cellphones.

Moreover, as per reports, internet speed is also slow for many users across the country.

The partial suspension of social media platforms and WhatsApp came soon after workers and followers of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) are holding countrywide protests following party chairman Imran Khan’s arrest in the Al-Qadir Trust case.

The telecom industry has suffered a loss of Rs2.46 billion in three days due to the internet shutdown in the country, reported 24NewsHD TV channel on Friday.

According to the telecom industry sources, the government receives a tax revenue of Rs285 million from mobile broadband services daily.

The government has suffered a loss of Rs860 million in tax revenue in three days while the people have no access to social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Online education, transport services, food delivery services and other businesses have also been affected due to the internet shutdown.

As many as 150,000 registered riders of Uber and Cream were affected in the twin cities due to the internet shutdown.

Similarly, the online delivery service of as many as 12,000 hotels and the business of around Rs30 million freelancers were also affected.

All Pakistan Software Export Association says that the IT sector has lost Rs10 billion in three days.

It adds that one-day business of the IT sector is $12 million.