While the government has finally admitted that it is indeed tinkering with the internet, the Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA) has raised concerns over a potential “complete meltdown” of business operations due to the imposition of a national firewall.
Amid uproar, especially in the aftermath of the damage done to the standing of Pakistan’s freelancers, Minister of State for Information Technology and Telecommunication Shaza Fatima Khawaja finally broke her silence. Though she did not explicitly acknowledge attempts to impose a firewall, she said the issue had been “blown out of proportion”.
While interacting with the media following the Senate Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunication meeting, the minister of state said that the government’s “web-management system” was being upgraded, which was why the internet was slowing down.
She added that this was a routine matter, and was done globally to upgrade the internet infrastructure. Interestingly, she did not name any other country to back up her claim, rather she reiterated the government’s right to take measures to protect the country’s cyberspace from attacks.
Ms. Fatima also acknowledged that the internet should not be slow, and emphasized that the government was working on bringing 5G to Pakistan to boost internet connectivity in the country.
Separately, in a press release, the software body highlighted the threats posed by the imposition of the national firewall. Ali Ihsan, the senior vice chairman of P@SHA, termed the internet slowdown and the disruption in Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) as a “direct, tangible and aggressive assault on the industry’s viability”, which was poised to cause damages amounting to $300 million and potentially even more.
The software association further said that the way the matter had been dealt with, without transparency, led to rising distrust among the people and the government, and the clients of Pakistan’s IT companies fear having their data and privacy compromised. According to Mr Ihsan, the global community wants to engage in business with companies they can rely on, but if Pakistan continues to have unreliable internet connectivity, clients may not hand out any further projects to Pakistani IT companies.
To safeguard the IT sector, which had recorded exports of $3.2 billion in the fiscal year that ended this June, P@SHA called on the government to immediately halt this “digital siege”. It also called on the government to collaborate with stakeholders from the industry to improve the country’s cybersecurity infrastructure without hurting the operations and growth of the IT industry.
According to Mr. Ihsan, safeguarding the economy is a national security interest for the country, and the threats posed to the “fastest-growing export sector” through the “careless and reckless” installation of a firewall may prevent the industry from maturing. He also warned that if the situation persisted, en masse exit of companies from Pakistan would not be mere speculation, but an imminent reality.
It is worth mentioning here that the internet slowdown had affected users in phases. In the first phase, those using mobile networks faced slow internet speeds, which affected the usability of social media platforms and communication channels. In the second phase, however, the WiFi connections and VPNs were affected, which had direct consequences for businesses.
While mobile devices were slow, people still had access to reliable internet at home or office during the first phase, but when the disruption reached those connections as well, things started to go down. What further caused uproar was the way Pakistani freelancers’ accounts were declared “unavailable” on the online marketplace, Fiverr. Similarly, with disrupted internet connections, many IT companies reported that their operations had come to a halt.