For millions of people, losing an internet connection is no longer simply an inconvenience. It can mean losing access to work, banking, education, emergency information, news and family members.
Across South Asia, governments have increasingly used internet and mobile-network shutdowns during elections, protests, communal violence and security operations. The reasons given are usually related to public safety or security. But the restrictions can also affect people who have no connection to the events that prompted them.
Pakistan offers a clear example of this tension. On February 8, 2024, the day Pakistan held its general election, authorities suspended mobile phone services across the country. The Interior Ministry said the decision was taken because of a deteriorating security situation following a rise in militant attacks.
For voters, journalists, election workers, businesses and ordinary families, however, the shutdown meant that a basic channel of communication disappeared on one of the country’s most important political days.
The decision was criticised by digital-rights groups, which had urged authorities to keep internet and digital communications available during the election. Access Now said the shutdown happened despite earlier calls and commitments to keep connectivity open during the vote.
The question is not unique to Pakistan.
It is becoming part of a much larger debate around the world: when governments believe that shutting down communications can improve security, who decides when that power should be used, how much disruption is acceptable, and who pays the price?
Internet shutdowns are no longer isolated events associated only with authoritarian governments or wartime conditions.
Access Now and its #KeepItOn coalition documented at least 296 deliberate internet shutdowns in 54 countries in 2024, making it a record year in their monitoring. Conflict was the leading trigger, accounting for at least 103 shutdowns in 11 countries.
The pattern continued in 2025. Access Now documented at least 313 shutdowns in 52 countries, another record in its tracking since 2016. At least 125 of the 2025 shutdowns were linked to conflict, representing 40% of the global total.
South Asia has been a major part of this trend. In 2024, Myanmar recorded 85 shutdowns and India 84, according to Access Now. Pakistan recorded 21, its highest annual number in the organisation’s tracking. Myanmar, India and Pakistan together accounted for more than 64% of the shutdowns recorded in the Asia-Pacific region that year.
The figures measure different incidents rather than simply the number of days people were offline. A shutdown may affect a city, district, province, network or particular service, and multiple restrictions can occur during the same period.
That distinction matters because the experience of being disconnected is not the same everywhere.
A short shutdown during an examination is different from losing mobile data for weeks in a conflict-affected province. Blocking one social-media platform is different from cutting mobile communications altogether.
Yet all of these restrictions raise the same basic question: how much control should governments have over the infrastructure through which citizens communicate?
Governments generally do not describe shutdowns as censorship. They usually cite security, public order, prevention of violence or the protection of lives.
Pakistan’s Interior Ministry used this argument when it suspended mobile services nationwide on election day in 2024. It said a recent increase in terrorist activity had created a deteriorating security environment and that measures were needed to protect people from security threats.
A similar explanation was given in Balochistan in August 2025. The provincial government requested the suspension of 3G and 4G mobile data services across the province because of what officials described as the “peculiar law and order situation.” The services were initially ordered to remain suspended until August 31.
Balochistan is not an ordinary test case. The province is Pakistan’s largest by area and has faced a long-running insurgency and repeated militant attacks. It is also home to major mining and infrastructure projects, including the Gwadar port and Chinese-backed investments.
Reuters reported that the 2025 suspension affected a province with about 15 million people and around 8.5 million mobile-phone users. The government said the measure was intended to disrupt militant communications.
From the government’s perspective, the calculation is straightforward: if armed groups use mobile networks to communicate or coordinate attacks, restricting those networks can be seen as a security measure.
But the same network is also used by doctors, journalists, students, traders, farmers, transporters and families.
The security problem therefore becomes a governance problem.
In August 2025, the shutdown in Balochistan illustrated the scale of that problem. The provincial government ordered mobile data services suspended throughout the province. Government officials confirmed that the order was genuine, while the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority said data services had been blocked on the directions of the “competent authorities.”
The decision came in a province where mobile connectivity is often the primary way people access the internet, particularly outside major cities.
For someone living in a remote district, losing mobile data can mean much more than being unable to open social media.
A farmer may not be able to contact a buyer. A small shop may lose digital payments or communication with suppliers. A journalist may be unable to send photographs or video. A student may lose access to an online lecture. A family may struggle to contact someone travelling through an insecure area.
The human cost is particularly difficult to measure because it does not appear in government statistics or telecommunications reports.
Amnesty International documented accounts from people in Balochistan who said shutdowns affected their ability to communicate and participate in political activity. One activist told the organisation that the government shutdown meant they could not even tell their family that they were safe.
Amnesty has also reported that localized shutdowns are particularly common in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and that some communities have experienced restrictions lasting months or, in some cases, longer.
These accounts do not by themselves establish whether every shutdown was unnecessary. They do, however, show why the impact cannot be measured only by whether a security operation achieved its immediate objective.
There is another cost that is easier to quantify. In 2024, research by Top10VPN estimated that deliberate internet restrictions worldwide cost the global economy $7.69 billion. Pakistan was estimated to have suffered the largest economic impact of any country that year, at about $1.62 billion.
The methodology is an estimate rather than a government accounting of actual lost output. It uses shutdown duration and economic indicators to calculate potential economic effects.
But other Pakistani studies and industry estimates point in the same direction. The Pakistan Institute of Development Economics has estimated that a 24-hour internet shutdown results in a direct loss of around 1.3 billion Pakistani rupees, equivalent to about 0.57% of the country’s average daily GDP.
Pakistan’s technology industry has also warned about the consequences. In December 2024, Pakistan Software Houses Association chairman Sajjad Mustafa Syed said an hour of internet disruption cost the IT industry about $910,000 and that 99% of IT companies had experienced disruptions under the conditions at the time.
These figures should be treated as industry estimates rather than independently verified losses. But the broader economic vulnerability is real.
Pakistan has been trying to expand its information-technology and freelance economy, with IT and IT-enabled services becoming an important source of foreign exchange.
A worker in Karachi, Lahore or Quetta can now provide software development, graphic design, accounting, marketing or other services to a client thousands of kilometres away.
The business depends on one thing that is easy to overlook: a stable internet connection.
In 2024, a Karachi-based freelancer, Zainub Khatib, told Geo that repeated outages prevented her from communicating with an international client and that she lost a $1,700 contract. She said she could not share files, hold a Zoom meeting or communicate normally through WhatsApp during the disruption.
Her experience illustrates a problem that does not appear in shutdown statistics. A government may record a network being unavailable for several hours. A business may experience the consequences for months.
A missed deadline can become a lost client. A failed video call can become a lost contract. A foreign company may decide that a country with unreliable connectivity is too risky for outsourcing.
As P@SHA chairman Sajjad Mustafa Syed put it in December 2024, even when an outage does not immediately affect a person, disrupted services for international clients can damage confidence in Pakistan’s technology industry.
The democratic consequences can be even harder to measure. Elections increasingly depend on digital communication.
Political parties use social media to campaign. Candidates communicate with voters through messaging applications. Journalists use mobile networks to report from polling stations. Citizens use online platforms to compare claims and follow results.
Cutting connectivity on election day can therefore affect the information environment around the vote.
Pakistan was not the only South Asian country to face this problem. In India, authorities disrupted internet services in Bihar’s Saran district during the 2024 general election. In Jammu and Kashmir, authorities also restricted VPN use in Rajouri in the period before the election.
India recorded 84 shutdowns in 2024, according to Access Now, including restrictions connected to protests, communal violence and other situations.
Bangladesh provides another example of the tension between election access and state control.
Before its January 2024 election, the telecom regulator instructed internet service providers and mobile operators to maintain uninterrupted access during voting. Access Now said that commitment was upheld during the election, although wider internet censorship remained a concern.
The contrast is important. It demonstrates that governments facing political tension do not necessarily have to choose between security and connectivity. The policy choice can instead involve targeted security measures, transparent legal procedures and restrictions that are limited in scope and duration.
The Bangladesh experience
Bangladesh also shows how quickly internet restrictions can become part of a political crisis.
During the country’s 2024 political upheaval, internet connectivity was disrupted during protests. Access Now had previously documented the government’s use of shutdowns in 2022 and 2023, including restrictions during political demonstrations.
The experience of Bangladesh is significant because the internet became both a means of organizing and a means of receiving information about events taking place on the streets.
When communications disappear during unrest, it becomes more difficult for citizens to verify information.
Rumours can spread without the ability to check them. Families may not know whether relatives are safe. Journalists can struggle to verify events. Human-rights organisations can have difficulty documenting abuses in real time.
This creates an apparent paradox. A government may shut down the internet in an attempt to prevent violence or misinformation. But the same shutdown can also remove one of the tools people use to distinguish verified information from rumours.
India presents the largest democratic example in South Asia.
Access Now recorded 65 internet shutdowns in India in 2025, down from 84 in 2024 and 116 in 2023. Despite the decline, India remained the democracy with the largest number of recorded shutdowns in 2025.
The reasons vary.
In 2024, Access Now recorded shutdowns connected to protests and communal violence, as well as restrictions related to other public-order situations. Manipur alone accounted for 21 shutdowns that year, while Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir each recorded 12.
India’s experience also highlights an important issue for policymakers: duration and geographic scope matter.
A shutdown affecting one district for several hours is not equivalent to one affecting millions of people for weeks.
Yet when restrictions become a routine response to unrest, the exceptional measure can gradually become normal government practice.
The question of authority is central to the debate.
In many countries, ordinary citizens do not directly know who ordered a shutdown, what evidence justified it, how long it will last or what legal process can be used to challenge it.
Pakistan’s experience illustrates this opacity. Freedom House reported that districts and provinces in Pakistan can submit security-related requests to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority for local mobile and internet shutdowns. It also documented multiple shutdowns during 2024, including in Balochistan and during by-elections.
That raises several questions for a democratic system. Should a local administration be able to request a shutdown without publishing the evidence behind the decision?
Should telecommunications companies be required to disclose the number and duration of government orders they receive?
Should governments publish the legal basis for each shutdown? Should affected citizens have access to courts while the restriction is still in place? And should there be a requirement to demonstrate that less disruptive measures were considered first?
These are not purely technical questions. They concern the distribution of power between the state, private telecommunications companies and citizens.
For journalists, a shutdown can remove the basic tools needed to report. A reporter covering a protest may need mobile data to send photographs, video or a live update. A journalist covering a bombing may need to contact hospitals, police and witnesses. A reporter in a remote district may have no alternative broadband connection.
During a conflict, communications can also be a matter of personal safety. If a reporter cannot contact an editor, family member or emergency service, the shutdown has moved beyond an information restriction. It has become a security risk of its own.
This is particularly relevant in places such as Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where journalists already work in difficult security environments.
The same problem affects citizens documenting events. When the internet disappears, evidence can disappear with it.
Videos may not be uploaded. Photographs may not reach newsrooms. Witnesses may not be able to communicate with rights groups. Families may be unable to report missing relatives.
This does not mean every claim made during a shutdown is true. It means that the ability to independently verify competing claims becomes weaker.
This is one of the most difficult questions. Governments often cite security as the reason for a shutdown, but demonstrating that a shutdown directly prevented an attack is difficult.
Access Now has argued that there is scant evidence that disrupting internet access stops bad actors, including in its criticism of Pakistan’s restrictions around the 2024 election.
At the same time, governments and security officials may argue that militants can use communications networks to coordinate attacks and that temporary restrictions can make such coordination more difficult.
The available public evidence does not provide a simple answer applicable to every security situation.
That is precisely why transparency matters. If a government claims a shutdown was necessary to prevent a particular threat, the public should be able to understand the legal authority, the geographical area, the duration and the basis for the decision, subject to legitimate national-security limits.
Without such information, it becomes difficult to assess whether a shutdown was a narrowly targeted security measure or a broader restriction on communications.
The internet is often discussed as something that connects people. Shutdowns reveal the opposite: governments can also use connectivity itself as a point of control.
This has particular consequences in poorer and remote regions. People in major cities may have several ways to connect — fibre broadband, multiple mobile networks, office connections or satellite services.
A person in a remote district may depend almost entirely on a mobile phone. When mobile data is switched off, there may be no practical alternative.
The same policy therefore does not affect everyone equally. A well-connected professional in a major city may be inconvenienced. A small trader, student or journalist in a remote district may be completely disconnected.
The economic and political consequences can therefore fall most heavily on communities that already have weaker access to infrastructure.
The debate is no longer limited to national governments and civil-society organisations. In September 2024, UN member states adopted the Global Digital Compact as part of the Pact for the Future.
The Compact recognizes the internet as a critical global facility and calls for an open, global, interoperable and reliable internet. It also includes a commitment by governments to “refrain from Internet shutdowns and measures that target Internet access.”
The commitment is significant because it places internet access within a broader international discussion about human rights, development and digital governance. But it does not automatically resolve the difficult situations governments face. A country experiencing a terrorist attack may still argue that temporary communications restrictions are necessary. The challenge is determining what safeguards should apply when such measures are used.
A more accountable system would not necessarily require governments to ignore genuine security threats. It would require governments to demonstrate why cutting communications is necessary and proportionate.
Possible safeguards include publicly identifying the authority that ordered a shutdown, stating its legal basis, specifying the geographic area and duration, and publishing the reasons once immediate security concerns have passed.
Courts could review shutdown orders. Parliament or independent regulators could examine their use. Telecommunications companies could publish transparency reports showing how often they receive government instructions.
Governments could also consider narrower measures rather than taking entire communities offline. For example, a restriction could be geographically limited rather than province-wide, or directed at a specific service rather than all mobile data, where the circumstances and technology allow.
The principle would be simple: security measures should be as limited as the threat requires.
An internet shutdown does not arrive with an invoice. Its costs are distributed across society.
The government may not immediately pay for a cancelled freelance contract. A telecom operator may not compensate a small shop for lost business.
A family may never calculate the financial value of being unable to contact someone. A journalist may never know how many stories were missed because a photograph could not be transmitted. A student may never recover the class or examination opportunity lost during an outage.
Yet the costs accumulate.
Pakistan’s experience demonstrates this clearly. Top10VPN estimated $1.62 billion in economic losses from major internet restrictions in the country during 2024. PIDE has separately estimated a direct loss of around Rs1.3 billion for a 24-hour shutdown. Industry groups have warned of hundreds of millions of dollars in potential losses from prolonged disruption and restrictions on VPNs.
The precise numbers differ because the methodologies differ. But they point to the same conclusion: connectivity is now part of the economy itself.
The debate over internet shutdowns is sometimes presented as a choice between national security and free speech.
That is too narrow.
It is also about economic development, public accountability, journalism, education, emergency communications and the ability of citizens to participate in public life. South Asia is becoming increasingly dependent on digital infrastructure while governments are simultaneously acquiring greater capacity to restrict it. That creates a policy problem that will become harder to ignore.
Pakistan wants to expand its technology exports. India is positioning itself as a global technology and AI power. Bangladesh is building a large digital economy. Across the region, governments are investing in digital public infrastructure and online services. But digital economies cannot function reliably if connectivity can disappear without clear rules. The question for governments is therefore not simply whether they have the technical ability to switch the internet off.
They already do.
The more important question is when they should be allowed to use that power, who should oversee the decision, and who should be accountable for the consequences.
For citizens, the issue is even more basic. When the network disappears, so does a part of their ability to work, communicate, report, organize and verify what is happening around them. As the world moves deeper into a digital economy, being connected is increasingly not a luxury.
It is part of how people participate in society. And when governments switch it off, the consequences extend far beyond a blank screen.
