PTA Highlights Four Reasons for Internet Slowdown in Pakistan

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Wednesday admitted before the Lahore High Court (LHC) that internet speed in the country had decreased and cited four reasons for the slowdown.

As Justice Shakil Ahmad resumed hearing a petition against the internet slowdown, the telecom regulator, the federal government, the information and law ministers, and others submitted their responses in the case.

The LHC rejected the response filed by the federal government’s lawyer for internet slowdowns and sought a clause-wise response in the next hearing.

The PTA’s lawyer said that damage to a submarine cable, mishandling by an internet service provider on July 31, a cyber-attack on August 15, and excessive use of VPNs resulted in the slowdown of internet speed in the country.

In its response, the PTA’s lawyer said that the first reason was the cutting of one of the submarine cables (SMW4) for the last month or so which reduced the inland capacity by 1.5 terabits per second.

Moreover, a 70 percent dip in internet services was noted due to an internet service provider making a severe misconfiguration in their core network. The PTA noted that stern action was taken against the defaulters which led to the firing of three senior technical managers at the internet service provider.

PTA said that the third reason was a severe degradation of around 1.5 terabits per second observed on internet traffic entering the country on August 15. The regulator said the drop might be due to some distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. PTA claimed that Indian state actors had been active over the past few years on national days such as August 14 to degrade internet services or deface government websites.

The fourth reason listed by PTA was the increased use of VPNs during the period. It said that slower speeds experienced by VPN users were due to inbuilt encryption, tunnelling, and long routing of packets.

Justice Ahmad directed the petitioner to amend his plea and then file it. The hearing was subsequently adjourned till August 27.

Source: Dawn