Internet speeds in cities other than Lahore experienced significant slowdowns on Sunday, according to local reports as experts express concerns over a national firewall being installed in the country.

The government is implementing an internet firewall to monitor and regulate content and social media platforms, however, it denies the use of the firewall for censorship.

The IT sector faced difficulties due to issues with international clients, leading to disruptions in social media applications such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

Like last month, several users struggled to upload and download images, voice notes, and videos. Virtual Private Networks users in multiple cities encountered difficulties accessing such services.

The slowdown in internet services is attributed to the second phase of firewall testing, reports said and added that it caused applications to lag, resulting in problems with uploading and downloading messages, as well as delays in message delivery.

Pakistan suffers a $2.2 million loss per hour when the internet is shut down for an hour, Pakistan Freelancers Association President Tufail Khan has said while quoting Netblocks data.

Netblocks is an institution which takes data from the World Bank, International Telecommunication Union and Eurostat. The tool tracks network stability and monitors internet outages in real-time.

“The internet outage affects delivery riders, IT-enabled people, cab riders,” Khan said while appearing through a video link on Spotlight with Munizae Jahangir which was aired on Aaj News on Tuesday.

Pakistan has a record of curbing online access in response to political turmoil, banning social media sites, or simply temporarily shutting down the internet altogether.

Farieha Aziz, co-founder of Bolo Bhi, a digital-rights and civil-liberties group, told Reuters earlier this week that there had been no acknowledgement of an official firewall and accused authorities of not coming clean on the issue.

“It seems sustained opacity is the official government policy,” Aziz said.

Rights group Amnesty International has also called on Pakistan to be transparent about internet disruptions.

According to the international data, Pakistan’s internet infrastructure has fallen significantly short of global leaders. Its average download speed places it around 100th globally (20.61 Mbps), and 141st in broadband download speeds (15.6 Mbps).