Pakistan suffers highest economic losses globally due to internet shutdown: report

A recent report revealed that Pakistan incurred the highest financial losses among all countries due to internet disruptions and restricted access to social media in the past year.

With a cumulative financial loss of $1.62 billion, Pakistan leads the global chart of countries affected by connectivity issues. This amount surpasses the losses in war-stricken nations like Sudan and Myanmar.

An independent VPN reviewer, Top10VPN.com, stated in a report that global internet disruption lasted 88,788 hours, causing a total financial loss of $7.69 billion. 

The report highlighted that these figures largely account for deliberate internet shutdowns, which occurred at least 167 times in 28 countries.

“This kind of deliberate outage is internet censorship in its most extreme form. Not only do they infringe on citizens’ digital rights, but they are also catastrophic acts of national economic self-sabotage,” Dawn quoted Simon Migliano, the head of research at Top10VPN.com.

For Pakistan, the report noted at least 18 deliberate internet shutdowns in 2024, including three significant disruptions during elections for “information control” and protests.

Cumulatively, the country experienced 9,735 disruptions that severely impacted 82.9 million users. The suspension of X since February 18 alone accounted for an estimated loss of $1.34 billion.

Moreover, authorities in Balochistan imposed an internet shutdown across the province for more than a month, from July 16 to Aug 21, due to demonstrations by the Baloch Yakjehti Committee in Gwadar. 

This 867-hour-long shutdown caused an $11.8 million financial loss.