Internet Issues in Pakistan: Key Findings Revealed
A research report on the reasons for internet outages and slowdowns in Pakistan has revealed important facts.
Increasing use of VPNs
According to a report by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), bandwidth usage through VPNs reached 634 Gbps in August 2024, which decreased to 378 Gbps in November 2024.
However, after the improvement of the internet in December 2024, bandwidth usage through VPNs stabilized at 437 Gbps. According to the report, the increasing use of VPNs has put severe pressure on the country’s internet infrastructure,
as they bypass CDNs (content delivery networks) and transfer traffic to international servers.
Reasons for Internet Slowdown
The report stated that 70 percent of the internet in Pakistan is provided through CDNs, but global submarine cables are not capable of handling the load during rush hours.
This led to internet slowdowns and users of applications like WhatsApp faced difficulties.
Economic loss
An increase of one terabyte per second costs the country about $10,000 per minute.
Solutions
According to the PTA report, the following steps are needed to improve internet speed:
Stopping unnecessary use of VPNs to reduce pressure on the internet infrastructure.
This report highlights the importance of government and private sector initiatives to address internet problems in Pakistan.
