Pakistan’s internet slows to uncomfortable levels, allegedly due to new China-style firewall

Minister issues denial – it's just an upgrade to the 'web-management system'

Industry group Pakistan Software Houses Association for IT (P@SHA) last week accused the Pakistan government late last week of implementing a China-style internet firewall – a claim the nation's IT minister denied over the weekend.

In a statement condemning the "hastily implemented" national firewall, the industry group claimed the digital barrier's design was not transparent and represented a "sacrifice" of Pakistan's IT industry "at the altar of misplaced priorities."

"The imposition of the firewall has triggered a perfect storm of challenges, with prolonged internet disconnections and erratic VPN performance threatening a complete meltdown of business operations," alleged the org, which predicted resultant financial losses of up to $300 million.

That figure would represent a month’s worth of Pakistan's IT exports – recorded in June at $298 million.

P@SHA described the alleged firewall as also creating a "distrust among global clients" who "fear their proprietary data and privacy will be compromised."

"A mass exodus of IT companies is not just a possibility but an imminent reality if immediate and decisive action is not taken," it warned.

Given Pakistan's history of censorship, it would hardly be surprising if the country were implementing strong online defenses. Last year, the country blocked internet access as protests erupted over the arrest of former prime minister Imran Khan. And that disruption was in no way an isolated incident – Pakistan has also blocked access to Wikipedia, TikTok, and Twitter in past years, usually to stop access to content deemed inappropriate on religious grounds.

Pakistan's minister of state for information technology, Shaza Fatima Khawaja, denied the existence of a national firewall. At a press conference on Sunday, Khawaja claimed "the internet has neither been shut down nor slowed down by the state."

She instead blamed reports of slowed internet on a few services on certain apps not downloading, which led a large segment of the population to begin using VPNs, which in turn put pressure on servers and further slowed connectivity.

According to the minister, the government was working to resolve issues with ISPs and telcos.

These comments came a few days after she had reportedly acknowledged internet disruption in the nation – caused by a routine upgrade to a national web-management system.

"It is the right of the government to take measures to protect its interests given the cyber security attacks that Pakistan is facing," Khawaja reasoned.

Meanwhile, reports continue to emerge of a slowed internet, with residents citing speeds 40 to 80 percent slower than normal.

Earlier this month, prominent freelance platform Fiverr temporarily set all gigs and availability status for its listed Pakistani gig workers to "unavailable" – to ensure personal ratings didn't tank for unresponsiveness caused by slower internet access speeds.

Some workers who claimed to be unaffected were justifiably unhappy with the platform's assumption. Thankfully they were able to change the setting manually.

Whatever Pakistan’s government is doing to the local internet, the effect is not dissimilar to the impact of China’s Great Firewall which sometimes makes access to offshore sites slow, actively blocks VPN and proxy use, and uses techniques such as DNS poisoning to redirect or obscure blocked sites, plus URL filtering based on keywords or patterns.

Within China, however, access speeds for domestic services remain generally high. ®