Within half an hour of this statement, past midnight, an official directive was issued to all Internet service providers in the country and Twitter "started disappearing from Pakistani Cyberspace starting 10 a.m." on Sunday, according to on Sunday by Bytes for All.

The IT ministry was not immediately available for comment on the block on Twitter.

"We feel that probably it was a test run for lot more to come in the future," said Shahzad Ahmad, country coordinator for Bytes for All, Pakistan about the government reversal of the block on Twitter. "We feel that it was an exercise to test the capacity as how they can implement such bans when needed."

Pakistan's bid to place curbs on the Internet is not new. It a request for proposal (RFP) for a system to filter and block websites. The RFP was put out by the National ICT R&D Fund of the country's ministry of information technology.

A court in Pakistan issued notices to the government after seven persons moved the court against alleged arbitrary acts of online censorship and website blocking by Pakistani authorities.