LHC summons Govt, PTA reply over Internet outage

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Monday summoned reply from the federal government, Ministry of Information Technology and the PTA over a petition on Internet outage in the country.

The high court bench issued its reserved verdict over hearing of the petition against outage of the Internet and ordered all parties to appear in the next hearing of court by their representatives.

Justice Shakil Ahmed of the LHC issued order and adjourned further hearing of the case until August 21.

Challenging the internet outage in Pakistan a citizen in his petition said that the internet has been slowed down in Pakistan owing to unknown reasons. He argued that the internet outage has been affecting IT-related businesses.

“While the world is advancing with modern technology, Pakistan’s IT sector is being destroyed,” the petitioner said.

He maintained that Pakistani companies and youth were earning billions of rupees foreign exchange through online businesses, adding that the internet outage is causing significant losses.

The petitioner requested the court to declare the internet outage as void and direct the government not to shut down the internet in the future.