The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has taken to twitter to debunk rumours going around saying that Amazon Web Services have been blocked by them in Pakistan.
The rumours started when numerous startups reported problems faced whilst accessing these web services. P@SHA, the Pakistan Software Houses Association for IT and IT-enabled services also faced this problem on the 24th of July. Their president, Ms Jehan Ara took to twitter to report this and say that many startups were facing similar problems with their services. She also mentioned, in a follow-up tweet that AWS was working fine through VPNs.
Ms Jehan Ara then speculated that this was the PTA’s doing in the following tweet:
If this interruption in access to cloud services is caused by PTA perhaps it is time someone in government did something about it. We don’t need any more of a hit on our economy #aws #connectivity #access
— jehan_ara (@jehan_ara) July 24, 2020
The PTA has since posted a tweet of their own, describing these rumours as ‘not credible.’
PTA has not taken any action to block VPNs or other services related to Amazon Web Services(#AWS). The information being spread on social media is not credible.
— PTA (@PTAofficialpk) July 24, 2020
The rumours have come at a time for the PTA when people have not been trusting them to the fullest. After the PUBG ban (later reversed by the Islamabad HC) and the requirements to register all VPNs earlier this summer, the public has been distrustful of the relevant authorities. The rumour was perhaps a reaction to these recent events.
