ISLAMABAD — The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has officially stated that the recent disruption in access to social media platform X (formerly Twitter) is not due to any local internet blockage, filtering, or government-imposed restriction. Instead, the outage is part of a broader global technical issue affecting multiple countries.
PTA issued this clarification following widespread complaints from Pakistani users who were unable to access X. The platform has experienced intermittent service outages since May 22, with a similar large-scale issue occurring that day which lasted for several hours before the platform was restored independently.
The authority further assured that a technical investigation confirmed there are no problems in Pakistan’s internet gateways, and that all other internet services across the country are working normally. There is no evidence of throttling or blocking of X by Pakistani ISPs.
The global internet monitoring organization NetBlocks also supported PTA’s assessment, stating that the outage on X is not country-specific and has affected users in several regions worldwide.
Meanwhile, Pakistani users reported difficulty accessing the platform on a large scale. DownDetector, a site that monitors real-time outages, logged 372 complaints about X’s inaccessibility from Pakistan by 5:36 PM.
PTA emphasized that it is closely monitoring the situation and will provide timely updates to the public if any significant developments occur.
The clarification comes amidst heightened sensitivity around social media access in the country, where platforms like X have occasionally been disrupted due to security or political concerns. However, this specific incident, PTA stressed, should not be linked to any such domestic measures.