The National Assembly Standing Committee on IT and Telecom received a stark assessment of Pakistan’s 5G deployment on July 14, with PTA Director General Amir Shehzad confirming that telecom operators have activated only 449 5G sites across 22 cities nationwide, a figure that committee members described as deeply inadequate given the scale of the country’s population, geography, and the promises made at the time of the spectrum auction.
Pakistan conducted its 5G spectrum auction in March 2026, and operators began commercial launches shortly after. However, the deployment numbers presented to the committee reveal how limited the actual physical rollout remains. Against a total national telecom tower count of approximately 50,000, 449 active 5G sites represent less than 1 percent of the country’s broader mobile infrastructure, a ratio that makes clear that 5G in Pakistan currently exists as a selective urban pilot rather than a commercially meaningful nationwide service. Committee Chairman Syed Amin-ul-Haque and members had convened the session to address widespread complaints about network degradation affecting 3G and 4G services, and officials from both the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication and PTA repeatedly invoked the 5G rollout as the ultimate solution, a response that committee members found difficult to accept given the figures being simultaneously disclosed.
The breakdown by city made the situation harder to defend. Committee member Sadiq Memon highlighted that Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and primary commercial hub, has only 50 active 5G sites currently operational, while Hyderabad has just three. Chairman Syed Amin-ul-Haque directed authorities to prioritise 5G tower expansion in Karachi specifically. IT Minister Shaza Fatima responded that telecom companies had originally been required to launch 5G services in only five cities during the first year of the licence, while acknowledging that Karachi requires more attention. PTA’s chairman noted that the pace of deployment is currently constrained by the import of 5G equipment, with physical supply chains determining how quickly new sites can be activated regardless of operator intent.
Memon offered the session’s most direct assessment of what the current pace implies, stating that at the rate of deployment observed, the 5G rollout will not be complete across Pakistan until 2035. He added that this timeline renders the entire promise of 5G largely moot, since by the time the network reaches full national coverage using the current trajectory, the technology itself will have been superseded by successor generations. The committee’s frustration reflects a broader gap between the policy narrative around Pakistan’s 5G auction and the operational reality that consumers, businesses, and parliamentarians are now beginning to scrutinise in detail.
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