An internet provider in Afghanistan’s Balkh province has confirmed to Independent Urdu that fiber optics service including broadband has been restored across the province.
In various Afghan provinces, the Taliban authorities stopped providing the fastest internet service through fiber optics cable, which started in Balkh province. According to the Taliban, the ban on the Internet is aimed at preventing ‘obscenity’.
An official of the company providing internet service to more than 700 customers in Balkh told Independent Urdu on the condition of anonymity that several meetings were held with Afghanistan’s state-owned telecom company ‘Afghan Telecom’ for the past three days.
The official said: ‘All private internet companies in Afghanistan have an agreement with Afghan Telecom under which the internet cannot be shut down. Wi-Fi service has been restored after these meetings.’
He further informed that apart from broadband, fiber optics has also been restored in the province.
Balkh government spokesman Haji Zaid told Independent Urdu that the internet was not blocked from the beginning but fiber optics cable was banned.
He said that last week I had also said the same in the statement on X that fiber cable has been banned while the rest of the internet is active.
Haji Zaid said: ‘Right now I am talking to you through the internet, it is clear that there is no internet outage here.’
The ban on internet access through fiber optics in various provinces of Afghanistan was condemned internationally.
Resumption of point-to-point Wi-Fi service has also been confirmed on social networking sites by Balkh residents.
Dr. Faheem Naseerzada, a resident here, said in a video released on Facebook that point-to-point Wi-Fi and fiber optics services have been restored in most areas of Balkh.
Point-to-point service means that the Wi-Fi service is provided to the users through an Internet router and in this service the users do not need to lay cables.
History of the Internet in Afghanistan
The period of Internet in Afghanistan can be divided into three periods, the first period is from 1990 to 2001 when the Afghan Taliban first ruled.
This section contains related reference points (Related Nodes field).
The Danish non-governmental organization International Media Support (IMS) has released a report on the history of the Internet in Afghanistan in 2025.
According to this report, normal dial-up connection was introduced in Afghanistan in the 1990s while satellite internet was ensured to the offices of some international non-governmental organizations.
After 2001, the second era of Internet in Afghanistan began when the first Internet cafe was established in 2002 at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul.
The cafe also used to provide the ‘.AF’ domain to various websites which is present with most of the official websites here.
After that, in 2006, with the help of the Chinese company ZTE, it started laying fiber optics in Afghanistan for high-speed Internet and in 2010, Internet was provided to various universities by NATO.
According to the report, 3G internet was launched in the country in 2013 and 4G in 2017, which increased the number of internet users through mobile.
According to IMS statistics, by 2024, more than 18 percent of Afghanistan’s population has been provided with Internet, while the number of cellular mobile connections is more than 27 million, which is 64 percent of the total population.
However, the report notes that cable internet penetration is limited and according to the World Bank’s 2023 report, only about one in 100 inhabitants have cable internet.
According to the 2024 statistics of International Telecommunication on Fiber Optics, more than 5,000 km of fiber optic cable has been laid in Afghanistan, while work is underway to lay more than 4,000 km of fiber optic cable, which is spread over about 20 provinces.
Afghanistan’s internet line is connected to Iran, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan with two cables laid by Pakistan Telecommunication Limited (PTCL).
The remaining 89 cables are laid by Afghanistan’s Ministry of Technology, which is operated by a company called ‘Afghan Telecom’.
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