The cost of shutting down the internet 

The caretaker government seems to be playing a strange game of will-they-won’t-they when it comes to the topic of internet outages. On the one hand, they claimed that election day would go by with no disruptions in internet services or social media. 

On the other hand, the caretaker interior minister Gohar Ejaz said in a press conference on Wednesday that the government had not ruled out the possibility of shutting down internet services and would do so based on the situation that arises during election day in different districts.

This is despite the fact that the Sindh High Court (SHC) directed the government and the PTA to ensure uninterrupted internet services till the polling day. The court had to take up the issue after multiple disruptions in internet services in recent months.Internet services have been affected thrice in the past two months. The first time on December 17th, then again on January 7th and the latest one on January 20th. The suspensions coincided with virtual events of the PTI.

The government has since claimed that the shutdowns happened because of technical issues. The claim is difficult to believe, and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) issued a statement condemning the shut downs as targeting just one party. 

It is very clear why the government shuts down the internet. It seems to have less to do with security threats and more to do with silencing certain political factions. The only problem is that there is a cost to shutting down the internet beyond freedom of speech as well. It greatly affects businesses. 

What is the cost of internet shutdowns? 

One of the groups most immediately affected by internet shutdowns are gig workers. These are daily workers that earn their money on platforms such as Careem, Foodpanda, and Indrive. These people require stable internet access through mobile phone data to do their jobs. Over these days, Foodpanda and services such as Careem were out of service because their captains and riders had no way of accepting rides/orders or of following maps. To put things in context, there are over 13000 foodpanda and Bykea riders, 30,000 Uber and Careem captains, and around 12,000 Foodpanda home chefs whose daily wages are dependent on broadband data.

Similarly, the shutdowns also have a serious impact on freelancers. A large number of Pakistanis work for foreign clients remotely on platforms such as Fivver and Upwork providing services ranging from coding to content writing and search engine optimization. The gig-economy is an emerging sector in Pakistan. Freelancers in the country earned around $400 million in both 2021 and in 2022 which accounts for about 15% of Pakistan’s total $2.6 billion ICT (information-communication-technology) exports.

On top of this, Point of Sale (POS) machines, often known as debit/credit card machines, use sims to establish a network connection and make digital payments. The severance of mobile internet signals has rendered these machines temporarily obsolete, limiting everyone to cash payments only.

Back in May 2023 when former prime minister Imran Khan had been arrested, internet services had been shut down. Back then Reuters had reported that Pakistan’s main digital payment systems fell by around 50% the day after former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s arrest. HBL, Pakistan’s largest bank, said that it had seen a decline of 60% in the throughput of the POS machines.

At the same time, telecom operators estimated the extent of the damages to be Rs. 820 million. On the other hand, the government incurred a loss of approximately Rs. 287 million in tax revenue.