Jazz has successfully deployed Pakistan’s first and highest-capacity 15.1 Gbps microwave link over a single antenna, marking a significant advancement in the operator’s backhaul infrastructure as it works to support the growing data volumes being generated across its network. The deployment utilizes a Super Dual Band configuration on a single high-efficiency antenna based on Huawei Technologies’ microwave platform, enabling significantly greater data throughput while optimizing the physical infrastructure requirements at tower sites. The milestone strengthens a critical and often underappreciated layer of network architecture: the high-capacity backhaul transport that carries data from mobile cell sites into the wider core network, a segment that becomes increasingly important as both 4G and 5G traffic volumes continue to rise.
The technical approach behind the deployment is notable for what it achieves without adding hardware. By combining multiple carrier outdoor units on a single antenna rather than mounting separate dishes for each carrier, Jazz has increased backhaul capacity while simultaneously reducing the tower footprint required to house the equipment. This is particularly valuable at dense urban sites and space-constrained tower locations where adding physical infrastructure is logistically difficult or commercially prohibitive. The reduction in hardware requirements also has implications for operational costs, maintenance complexity, and the visual and structural burden on existing tower infrastructure, making the solution attractive not just as a capacity measure but as an efficiency improvement across the backhaul network.
Khalid Shehzad, Chief Technology Officer of Jazz, said the operator has always been at the forefront of adopting advanced technologies to build Pakistan’s most advanced and future-ready network. He noted that as the market leader with the country’s largest fifth-generation footprint, Jazz’s transport network infrastructure has consistently evolved ahead of the growing demands of its customers, and described the 15.1 Gbps microwave milestone as a demonstration of the company’s ability to push the boundaries of network capacity and innovation. The achievement is part of Jazz’s broader strategy of strengthening its transport network across both fiber and microwave infrastructure simultaneously, recognizing that microwave backhaul remains an essential complement to fiber in geographies where trenching and cable deployment are not always feasible or cost-effective.
The deployment comes at a time when backhaul capacity has emerged as one of the most critical constraints on the quality of mobile broadband services in Pakistan, particularly as fifth-generation rollout continues and the volume of data traversing from cell sites into the core network increases substantially. Jazz’s investment in record-setting microwave backhaul capacity signals that the operator is approaching network evolution holistically, ensuring that the transport layer keeps pace with the radio access network upgrades that have been the more visible focus of fifth-generation deployment discussions in the country. By establishing a new benchmark for microwave link capacity in Pakistan, Jazz is also setting a reference point for the industry at large on what is technically achievable with current generation microwave platforms.
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