Pakistan’s telecom watchdog made it clear that no digital non-public community (VPNs) was blocked within the nation, nor it deliberate to take action sooner or later regardless of having the aptitude. It was introduced by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) chairman Hafizur Rehman on Monday whereas addressing the launch of the regulator’s ‘Annual Report’.
In keeping with the Specific Tribune, Rehman made it clear that to this point, no VPN had been blocked and there was no such plan for the longer term. “We’ve stated it earlier than, and I repeat it now: we may block VPNs, however we can’t. So far, no VPNs have been blocked.” The assertion comes after information taking rounds for months that the regulator had initiated the method of registering the VPNs.
The deadline for the registration was prolonged past November 30. Nevertheless, a brand new deadline had not been introduced for the VPN suspension. The federal government had expressed the apprehension that VPN use may be dangerous for the folks, whereas accessing immoral contents on social media or different web platforms.
Final week, the federal government had introduced that it was registering VPNs to enhance monitoring and management on-line actions and in addition expressed confidence that these efforts would result in enhancements in curbing the unfold of faux information.
In the meantime, in keeping with the most recent PTA knowledge, half of the nation’s inhabitants used two social media platforms – Fb and YouTube. These two platforms remained the preferred among the many Pakistani social media customers with over 60 million Fb customers and extra that 70 million YouTube viewers. The info confirmed that properly over 70 per cent customers have been males.
TikTok is one other in style social media platform in Pakistan with 54.four million customers by January 2024; 78 per cent of them male. There have been 17.Three million Instagram customers – 64 per cent males and 36 per cent females, in keeping with the PTA knowledge.
The annual report confirmed that the telecom sector revenues reached a document Rs 955 billion in fiscal 12 months 2023-24, with a mean income per consumer (ARPU) of Rs 302 per thirty days in April-June 2024 interval.
It additionally acknowledged that the variety of telecom subscribers had reached 196 million, amongst them 142.Three million have been broadband subscribers — 3.6 million mounted broadband and 138.7 million cellular broadband.
