Tech Desk 
Jan 04, 2025
Pakistan has topped globally the charts with a cumulative financial impact of $1.62 billion. This was higher than the cost in countries like Sudan and Myanmar, which are ravaged by civil wars.
According to a report released by Top10VPN.com, an independent VPN reviewer, stated that the global internet disruption lasted 88,788 hours, affecting a total financial loss of $7.69bn.
“Report claimed online disruptions had $1.62bn financial impact in 2024”
The data estimated the price of deliberate internet shutdowns — total blackouts, social media shutdowns and throttling — by the authorities, which occurred 167 times across 28 countries.
Head of Research at Top10VPN.com, Simon Migliano stated: “This kind of deliberate outage is internet censorship in its most extreme form. Not only do they infringe on citizens’ digital rights but they are also catastrophic acts of national economic self-sabotage.”
Internet shutdown in Pakistan
For Pakistan, Top10VPN.com tracked 18 instances of deliberate internet shutdown for three significant reasons — elections, data control, and protest — in 2024.
This internet shutdown happened for 9,735 hours and affected 82.9 million users across the country.
According to the estimated data, the ongoing shutdown of X (formerly Twitter) since February 18 was pricey, with a total estimated impact of $1.34bn.
According to the report, the calculation was made using the Cost of Shutdown Tool (COST) developed by NetBlocks.
COST evaluated the potential economic impact of internet shutdowns using methodologies published by the Washington DC-based think tank Brookings Institution and CIPESA, a digital rights group funded by the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID).
The economic impact of the outage of specific apps and services was evaluated by calculating the reliance on them for contribution to gross domestic product (GDP).
Impact of internet shutdown globally
Across the world, authorities shut down the internet in 2024 for several reasons, such as conflict, and censorship, to avoid cheating on exams, protests, exams and military coups.
Reportedly, Asia was by far the most impacted region due to restrictions in Pakistan, Myanmar, Bangladesh and India, as these were four of the six most affected countries in 2024.
X (formerly Twitter) was the most disrupted social media website, with total outages lasting 20,322 hours. It was followed by TikTok 8,115 hours, Signal 2,880 hours, Facebook 2,091 hours and Instagram 2,010 hours.
