Pakistan’s economy has suffered a loss of PKR 65 billion in 2023 due to internet shutdowns.
Statista’s latest data reveals that 8.3 million Pakistanis were affected by the internet outage, which lasted 259 hours.
Statista is a German online organization that specializes in data collection. It ranked Pakistan seventh in terms of losses in the last financial year.
Last year, India was one of the top countries with the longest internet shutdowns in the world, with 47 crore users not having access to the internet. This resulted in India being ranked fourth for internet shutdowns.
“In India – the country that cuts internet access the most – shutdowns have in the past clustered in Kashmir and Rajasthan, where they have been used during protests (and preemptively when protests were expected), but also during exams. In 2023, ethnic tensions in Manipur state led to most targeted shutdowns employed by the government”, states Statista’s official website.
Internet service in India was highest in Occupied Kashmir and Rajasthan.
The total list of 25 countries with the most internet shutdowns from top to bottom is Russia, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Iran, India, Iraq, Pakistan, Algeria, Senegal, Azerbaijan, Guinea, Brazil, Mauritania, Yemen, Venezuela, Kenya, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, Gabon, Tanzania, Cuba, Chad, Zimbabwe and Suriname at last in the list respectively.
Regionally, after 2019, Asia experienced the most disruption cases of internet connections, over 50 percent compared to the rest of the world.
