Can, but have not blocked any VPNs: Pakistan's telecommunication authority

Pakistan's telecom watchdog made it clear that no virtual private network (VPNs) was blocked in the country, nor it planned to do so in the future despite having the capability.

It was announced by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) chairman Hafizur Rehman on Monday while addressing the launch of the regulator's 'Annual Report'.

According to the Express Tribune, Rehman made it clear that so far, no VPN had been blocked and there was no such plan for the future. We have said it before, and I repeat it now: we could block VPNs, but we won't. To date, no VPNs have been blocked.

The statement comes after news taking rounds for months that the regulator had initiated the process of registering the VPNs. The deadline for the registration was extended beyond November 30. However, a new deadline had not been announced for the VPN suspension.

The government had expressed the apprehension that VPN use might be harmful for the people, while accessing immoral contents on social media or other internet platforms.

Last week, the government had announced that it was registering VPNs to improve monitoring and control online activities and also expressed confidence that these efforts would lead to improvements in curbing the spread of fake news.

Meanwhile, according to the latest PTA data, half of the country's population used two social media platforms Facebook and YouTube. These two platforms remained the most popular among the Pakistani social media users with over 60 million Facebook users and more that 70 million YouTube viewers. The data showed that well over 70 per cent users were males.

TikTok is another popular social media platform in Pakistan with 54.4 million users by January 2024; 78 per cent of them male. There were 17.3 million Instagram users 64 per cent males and 36 per cent females, according to the PTA data.

The annual report showed that the telecom sector revenues reached a record Rs 955 billion in fiscal year 2023-24, with an average revenue per user (ARPU) of Rs 302 per month in April-June 2024 period.

It also stated that the number of telecom subscribers had reached 196 million, among them 142.3 million were broadband subscribers -- 3.6 million fixed broadband and 138.7 million mobile broadband.