The Fifth Floor: Pakistan's internet mystery

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 7 September 2024

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Why are people in Pakistan struggling to use messaging apps and social media? BBC Urdu's editor Asif Farooqi explains why this might be more than just a simple internet glitch. Plus, we hear from colleagues who speak Spanish, Arabic and Bulgarian about their favourite filler words and sounds.

Produced by Alice Gioia and Hannah Dean.

(Photo: Faranak Amidi. Credit: Tricia Yourkevich.)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.
0:04.0	This is
0:05.0	You're
0:08.0	You're actually
0:09.0	the fifth floor.
0:10.0	The fifth floor de noosos fifth floor in Newseus.
0:14.0	We see me call.
0:15.0	To me have this fifth floor
0:17.0	fornak and me this obat.
0:21.0	This is the fifth floor at the heart of global storytelling with BBC
0:26.2	journalists from all around the world. I'm your host Faranak Amidhi. A few weeks ago, BBC Ordos editor, Ossef Thaddori, boarded a flight from London to Islamabad.
0:44.0	Aisif is based here in the UK, but every so often he travels back to his home country
0:51.4	Pakistan to meet up with the BBC team there. But when he
0:55.8	landed in the sweltering heat of Islamabad something odd happened.
1:00.6	I wanted to call the taxi company and they usually use
1:07.2	WhatsApp for the contact and when I tried to call them on what-sap it wasn't working.
1:15.0	Osif was not the only person who was experiencing this.
1:19.0	In the past few months, people in Pakistan have been having issues using messaging and social media apps.
1:26.0	And not just for trivial things like scrolling through videos,
1:30.0	but also to access services and carry out business activities.
1:35.0	So why is the internet not working in Pakistan?
1:39.0	Well, luckily, Osif has a brilliant team of journalists who can help him investigate.
	...

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