ISLAMABAD: The Pakis­tan Telec­om­munication Authority has issued licences to two companies for providing VPN services in an attempt to monitor traffic bypassing local censorship.

The licensed companies will only provide VPN services to commercial clients — IT comp­anies, banks, foreign missions, etc — making the use of VPN by individual users unlawful.

The use of VPNs in Pakistan surged after X was banned in February 2024. Since then, the government has made multiple attempts to outlaw the use of VPNs by individual users.

However, there were no legal grounds to block VPNs and authorities lacked the tools and technical expertise to block all VPNs, a senior official of the PTA told Dawn.

Licensed firms will provide services to commercial clients, making the VPN use by individuals unlawful

The PTA then asked commercial entities to register their IP addresses on a web portal to avoid the purge and continue using VPNs. However, the scheme failed to yield the desired results, forcing the government to introduce a licensing regime to localise VPNs.

In a statement on Monday, PTA said that two VPN service providers have been registered under the category of ‘Class Licence for the Data Services’. A class licence allows multiple users to operate under a general set of conditions without needing individual approval.

As of December 2024, PTA resumed granting Class Licences for Data Serv­ices, specifically for VPN service providers. The entities offering VPN and related services are requ­i­red to obtain this licence to ope­rate legally in Pakistan.

The two companies, whose names weren’t announced by the PTA, will be authorised to sell VPNs to businesses.

The PTA has said that it will allow the use of VPNs for “lawful purposes”, ensuring data security, privacy and regulatory compliance while promoting transparency.

The idea of introducing VPN service providers was floated by the Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA), a trade body representing the IT and IT-enabled services sector.

The P@sha chief, Sajjad Mustafa Syed, said the licence to two companies was a “welcoming step”, and it will facilitate around 2.5 million freelancers in the country, the majority of whom were women trying to support their families.

Mr Syed didn’t explain how individual freelancers stand to benefit when the licences were only allowed to sell VPN services to commercial clients.

The VPN service providers will res­olve “security issues”, which were the gov­ernment’s main concerns, as lice­nsed service providers will allow the government to monitor VPN traffic, he added.

Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2025