- Pakistan has resumed VPN licensing under a new framework
- Five local companies are now authorized to provide “legal” VPN services
- Users can use these licensed VPNs without registering their personal IP with PTA
Taking a significant new step in its long and often controversial campaign to regulate the Internet, Pakistan’s government has officially launched a licensing scheme for Virtual Private Network (VPN) providers.
The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) announced on November 13 that it has granted the first set of licenses to five local companies, allowing them to offer what it calls “secure and legal” VPN services to the public.
The move is the latest chapter in a multi-year effort by authorities to regulate VPN use, tools that have become essential for many Pakistanis to circumvent widespread censorship.
Major social media platforms, including X (formerly Twitter), have been blocked intermittently or permanently for months, forcing citizens and businesses to turn to the best VPN services to gain free access to the global internet.
For users, one of the immediate changes is now that they can use these specific licensed services without having to go through the previously cumbersome process of registering their individual IP addresses directly with the PTA.
A new framework, old concerns
While the government presents this as a measure to improve cyber security and provide regulatory convenience, the context of Pakistan’s digital landscape raises serious concerns for privacy advocates.
Previous attempts to ban “unregistered” VPNs have fallen due to legal challenges and public backlash, leading to this new, more structured approach to creating a government-approved pool of providers.
The core issue remains the potential for surveillance. By forcing VPN providers to be licensed locally, the government makes it easier to force these companies to monitor user activity and hand over data.
This is in stark contrast to the policies of the major international providers, many of which have strict no-logs VPN policies and have previously pulled physical servers from countries with intrusive data retention laws, such as neighboring India.
Moreover, this move comes amid reports that Pakistan is working with China to develop a “Great Firewall” style internet censorship system.
A system of licensed, and therefore controllable, VPNs can be a crucial component of such an infrastructure, ensuring that even citizens attempting to circumvent censorship are routed through state-sanctioned channels.
What does this mean for Pakistanis?
Pakistani citizens now have a choice: use one of the five newly licensed, local VPN providers or continue to use international, unlicensed services and risk potential disruption.
The PTA’s announcement frames the new system as a way to promote “regulatory facilitation, ease of use and improved cyber security across Pakistan’s digital ecosystem.” But for many, the bigger risk is not malware, but the loss of anonymity and the possibility that the government can monitor their online activities.
Digital rights experts have consistently warned that such regulatory efforts could seriously harm the growth of the country’s digital economy, which relies heavily on open internet access for freelancers, IT companies and startups. Previous crackdowns on VPNs have already been blamed for throttling internet speeds and creating an unpredictable online environment for businesses.
As this new licensing regime rolls out, the key question will be whether the PTA will now more aggressively block access to international VPN providers who refuse to apply for a local license.
If that happens, millions of Pakistanis who rely on these tools for privacy, security and access to information will face a stark choice between using a potentially compromised local service or being cut off from the global Internet.
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