Islamabad - After blocking more than 400,000 websites for objectionable material, now Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) is considering to restrict porn sites on mobile handsets also.
Officials said that the authority has received complaints that porn sites are accessible on internet and minors and under age could access it through their own or parent’s handsets.
Whether you access internet through personal computer or mobile phone the law is same; objectionable sites are banned in country, an official said.
He said authority has received complaints that adult content is accessible on almost all the major telecom networks.
“We are investigating why it is available on mobile phones, but I think mobile service providers are using VPN,” official said.
A Virtual Private Network is a method used to add security and privacy to private and public networks, including WiFi Hotspots and the Internet.
VPN replaces the user's initial IP address with one from the VPN provider. For instance, if someone is living in Islamabad, with a VPN he could appear to live in some other city of the world.
According to sources in industry, telecom service providers are not blocking porn content due to business considerations.
Browsing websites may only consume some megabytes but if you download or watch some movie the data consumption is in gigabytes, a source said.
According to experts, PTA will direct all the telecom operators to establish Internet Exchange Point (IXP) to facilitate the local internet traffic to remain local and block the objectionable sites.
On the other hand, industry representatives deny that they are providing adult material to make quick bucks.
Internet is full of adult content, putting too many restrictions or blocking too many websites slows down the system and loading time of websites increases much on handsets, an industry rep said.
Civil society believes blocking porn is social and cultural norm of the country.
“In overall picture, I don’t think anybody will have any objection on blocking porn sites. Since 2006-07 porn content is banned in country as per supreme court decision,” said Naveed Haq, Chapter Development Manager, Asia-Pacific, Internet Society (ISOC).
According to PTA’s recent data, the total number of cellular users in the country until May 2016 was 133,477,666 while the 3G/4G subscribers were 29,748,666.