Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Chairman Major General (retd) Hafeez ur Rehman has told lawmakers that Pakistan now leads the world in YouTube video viewership, with users in the country watching around 560 million videos on the platform every day. He shared the figures during a briefing to the National Assembly Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunications on Tuesday, as reported by Geo News. According to the chairman, about 96 million Pakistanis currently use YouTube, which shows how widely the platform is used across the country. The briefing focused on social media usage and gave committee members a picture of how quickly digital platforms are growing among Pakistani users, with video content emerging as one of the most visible areas of that growth. The numbers were presented as part of a wider review of how Pakistanis use online services and how well telecom networks are keeping pace.
The chairman also presented numbers for other widely used platforms during the session. TikTok has around 100 million users in Pakistan, while WhatsApp has about 100 million users as well, which reflects the size of the domestic audience for both short-form video and messaging. Placed next to the YouTube figures, the data describes a population that spends a growing share of its time on video and social applications every day. The numbers arrive at a time when internet use and mobile connectivity continue to expand across the country, and they give regulators, creators, and telecom operators a clearer sense of where audience attention is concentrated. For a market of this size, such usage levels also raise practical questions about network capacity, a subject that also featured in the chairman’s briefing.
Hafeez ur Rehman also spoke about the state of mobile services in the country. Around 1.8 million people are now using 5G in Pakistan, with services being rolled out in 24 cities, which puts the user base close to two million. He said efforts are under way to improve network performance and service quality so that subscribers see a more dependable experience, particularly as demand for video and data heavy applications keeps rising. The chairman further stated that he had visited 41 districts together with telecom operators to assess service quality and inspect mobile towers on the ground. Such visits give the regulator a direct view of how networks perform at the local level, including areas that sit well outside the major urban centres.
The figures give a clear view of where Pakistani internet users spend their time, and they carry weight for content creators, advertisers, and telecom companies that plan around audience behaviour. Pakistani creators have also been gaining ground abroad, with more than 60 percent of total watch time for Pakistani YouTube channels now coming from viewers outside the country, according to YouTube figures covered earlier by Computerworld Pakistan. Creators who build audiences on the platform, in turn, rely on stable mobile connections to upload and stream their content. Together with the data shared by PTA Chairman Hafeez ur Rehman, these trends point to an online video ecosystem that is expanding both at home and in overseas markets. With 5G rollout, network quality, and social media usage all featuring in the same briefing, the update to the National Assembly committee covered both the demand for online content and the infrastructure needed to deliver it to users across Pakistan.
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