Internet services, social media apps fully restored in Pakistan after Sunday's outage

Millions of Pakistanis faced slow internet services and disruption of social media in Pakistan on late Sunday, during a virtual meeting organised by former ruling PTI.

Following the outage, social media platforms including Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook have been restored across Pakistan.

As the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has not shared any update about the suspension of internet services and restricted access to Twitter, social media users used proxy services, and created trends of #NoInternet and #PehlaOnlineJalsa, with thousands of tweet appearing at the microblogging platform. 

The authority partially restored mobile internet services late at night and social media apps were also restored in the wee hours.

The decision to shut down social media apps, and internet services was slammed by many human rights activists and citizens, who claimed that it was a violation of the right to freedom of expression.

Internet outage watchdog Netblocks said the disruption started around 8pm on Sunday, coinciding with a virtual rally of PTI, which was live-streamed on social media.

It said internet users in parts of Pakistan reported difficulties in accessing the platforms and complained of slow internet speeds.