Pakistan’s internet speed has increased by 60 percent over the past two and a half years, while fibre-optic connectivity has doubled, Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Shaza Fatima Khawaja said on Tuesday. She shared the figures while speaking at the Margalla Dialogue in Islamabad, where she also delivered the keynote at a forum on technology and the transformation of state and society. The minister said that the improvement reflects the work done by the government to expand digital infrastructure, and she presented the numbers as evidence of the progress made in connectivity during the period.
According to the minister, internet data usage in the country has increased by two terabits per second, which has taken the total live internet capacity to around seven terabits per second. She said that two new submarine internet cables have been added to improve international connectivity, while the fibre-optic network has expanded from three million connections to more than six million. Submarine cables carry most of the international internet traffic of the country, and fibre connections support the faster home and business broadband services that depend on stable, high-capacity links.
The minister also spoke about spectrum, which is the radio frequency that mobile networks use to deliver services. She said that Pakistan has completed the largest spectrum auction in its history, offering 480 MHz of spectrum, and that this increased the total available spectrum in the country from 274 MHz to more than 750 MHz. She added that 5G services have been launched in Pakistan and that around 1.8 million users are already subscribed to the technology. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Chairman had given the same user figure of 1.8 million to a National Assembly committee last week.
Shaza Fatima Khawaja said that the government is committed to advancing the Digital Nation Pakistan vision and to expanding the digital infrastructure of the country. The figures she shared cover capacity, fibre, spectrum, and 5G subscribers, which are the main building blocks for faster and more dependable internet services. How these improvements are felt by users will depend on how the mobile operators use the additional spectrum and how quickly the fibre and 5G networks reach more areas, and the minister’s statement indicates that the government expects the expansion to continue.
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