As the South Asian country begins national elections, Pakistan's top ministry said it has temporarily suspended mobile phone networks and internet services across the country to deal with any "possible threats". Pakistan's interior ministry said in a statement that the move was prompted by recent terrorist incidents in the country. Local journalists posted on X earlier Thursday that internet access was available through a wired broadband connection.
But NetBlocks, an independent service that tracks outages, later said that Pakistan had also begun blocking Internet services.
Pakistan's interior ministry did not say when mobile services would be restored.
While it's not unprecedented for a country to shut down mobile networks and the Internet on critical days - governments in neighboring India and in Africa's Uganda and Ethiopia have taken similar steps in the past - nationwide blackouts are still very rare.
Free speech advocates have criticized the government's overuse of mobile network shutdowns in the past, arguing that information and communications should be kept accessible during political polls.