Government suspends internet in various parts of Pakistan

Pakistani government has suspended internet connection in some parts of Balochistan for a temporary time period.

Wireless data services, 3G, 4G/LTE, GPRS of Cellular Mobile Operators and PTCL have been suspended in the areas of Chaman, Qila Abdullah and Pishin by the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunications for an indefinite time period.

The Law Enforcement Agency approved of this decision in accordance with few unknown security reasons. The authorities are not sure themselves when these internet services will be restored.

Regarding the issue, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) mentioned that the MOIT issued Policy Directive back in December 2009 about the ‘Closure of Telecom Services due to National Security Concerns” that permits the selected institutions to comply by the closure requests, reported Tech Juice.

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PTA was given requests to shut down the services and it ordered relevant operators to execute the orders in these particular areas.

PTA Chairman Ismail Shah stated that cross-border signal issue has already been talked about with Afghanistan via Foreign Office. Yet, jamming these facilities is still not the appropriate solution to these problems, as per Pro Pakistani.

Furthermore, these internet services are already closed down in the entire FATA region since June 2016 in order to ban the facility from terrorists and are still not resumed. Mobile services operating in Mohmand Agency are also shut down since March 2017 due to an ongoing military operation by the Armed Forces.