Pakistan businesses reeling from slow internet blame testing for firewall

For the free online tech skill classes advertised, there were hundreds of Facebook "likes" and in the end 1,500 people signed up. But on the first day last week, only a handful of those registered managed to log in to the live session. The internet was working at a snail's speed. "We received hundreds of complaints," says the course tutor, Wardah Noor, founder of the IT training firm XWave, based in Layyah, in the Pakistani province of Punjab. Internet speeds in the country have dropped by 30-40% over the past few weeks, according to the Wireless and Internet Service Providers…