Pakistan’s Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication (MoITT) is finalizing a National Connectivity Plan that would nearly triple the country’s average fixed broadband speed, raising it from 30.32 Mbps to 85 Mbps, according to officials familiar with the matter.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has told the ministry to move quickly on finalizing the framework. If the plan’s targets are met, Pakistan would climb from its current global ranking of 92nd in broadband performance into the top 50, a jump officials are positioning as central to the country’s digital economy goals.
Faster Fiber, Wider 5G Reach
The National Connectivity Plan (NCP), still being shaped through consultation with telecom operators and other stakeholders, rests on two technologies: 5G mobile networks and Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) connections. Officials want both to extend beyond the handful of large cities where fast internet is currently concentrated, reaching small cities, rural communities and remote areas.
Officials have previously said the earliest 5G coverage would concentrate on major cities, where operators can justify the investment fastest, with rural and smaller-market coverage following in later phases. The NCP’s targets suggest that broader rural push is meant to follow rather than accompany the initial rollout.
A central target is tower fiberization, the share of mobile towers linked by fiber-optic cable rather than microwave connections, which supports faster and more stable data speeds. That figure currently stands at 16 percent nationwide. The plan proposes raising it to 60 percent over the next three years.
On fixed-line broadband, the government wants to expand fiber house passes, buildings physically reachable by fiber-optic cable, from more than 5.1 million to 10 million. Pakistan currently has 2.8 million active FTTH subscribers, served by a fiber network spanning 234,000 kilometers and six operational submarine cable landings, officials said.
Several regulatory changes are also under consideration as part of the plan:
- Abolishing Right of Way (RoW) fees, the charges telecom operators pay to install fiber cables on public and private land
- Introducing a single-window approval system for telecom infrastructure projects
- Creating district-level licensing to speed up local network rollouts
- Offering tax relief for internet users in underserved and remote areas
- Making fixed broadband connectivity mandatory for government institutions, schools and healthcare facilities
MoITT officials say the plan will also spell out new rules governing what operators must deliver, as part of a wider regulatory overhaul of the sector.
What Faster Internet Would Mean for Pakistan
Federal Minister for Economic Affairs Ahad Cheema, who chaired a high-level meeting on the plan in late July alongside Federal Minister for IT and Telecommunication Shaza Fatima Khawaja, said expanding affordable, high-speed connectivity for freelancers, e-commerce businesses and digital entrepreneurs in remote regions remains a government priority.
That emphasis reflects how much of Pakistan’s digital economy depends on consistent, not just fast, internet. Freelancers and remote workers rely on stable upload speeds for video calls and file transfers, services that patchy fixed-line coverage in smaller cities currently limits regardless of what national averages show.
Telecom operators have their own stake in the reforms. Industry groups have long argued that Right of Way charges and slow municipal approvals add cost and delay to fiber rollouts. Removing both would lower the barrier to serving markets operators have so far judged too costly to reach.
Government offices, schools and hospitals would also feel a direct effect if mandatory broadband connectivity moves from proposal to policy, extending reliable internet access to public institutions that currently rely on inconsistent connections in many parts of the country.
A Legacy of Slow, Uneven Connectivity
Pakistan’s broadband speeds have trailed regional peers for years, a gap officials attribute to underinvestment in fixed-line infrastructure, high telecom taxation and prolonged uncertainty over spectrum allocation.
That uncertainty began easing earlier this year, when the government completed a long-anticipated 5G spectrum auction. PTCL Group’s mobile arm, Pak Telecom Mobile Limited (PTML), acquired additional spectrum in the auction and has since begun rolling out 5G services while integrating the newly merged Ufone-Telenor network into a single operation.
The plan is also being framed as part of the broader Digital Pakistan 2030 agenda, a policy framework the government has used to coordinate infrastructure, investment and digital-inclusion goals across federal and provincial governments. It follows budget commitments made for the current fiscal year, when the IT and telecom sector received an allocation of roughly Rs. 19.58 billion, with fiber expansion identified as a spending priority.
Telecom Investment Already Picking Up
Global industry body GSMA has pushed Pakistan to pair infrastructure targets with tax reform. Speaking at a Digital Pakistan 2030 roundtable in Islamabad in late July, GSMA’s Head of Asia Pacific, Julian Gorman, said the organization is studying whether reduced taxes on telecom services and low-cost smartphones could expand broadband adoption enough to offset the resulting near-term revenue loss through wider digital and economic activity. The GSMA’s broader research suggests every 10-point rise in broadband penetration translates into roughly 1 to 2 percentage points of additional GDP growth. With spectrum uncertainty now resolved, the group expects operators to commit billions of dollars to network upgrades in the years ahead.
Early signs of renewed investment are already visible in operator earnings. PTCL Group reported a 62 percent year-on-year increase in consolidated revenue for the first half of 2026, with its Flash Fiber broadband service crossing 900,000 subscribers and PTML posting sharply higher profits after the completed Ufone-Telenor merger, which pushed the combined group’s subscriber base past 74 million. Company executives have pointed to fiber and 5G expansion as key drivers behind those results, the same areas the National Connectivity Plan is designed to accelerate across the wider industry.
What Happens Next
MoITT has not announced a public date for finalizing the National Connectivity Plan. Officials say further consultation with telecom operators and other industry stakeholders will precede formal adoption, after which measures such as the RoW fee abolition and single-window licensing system would still need to move through separate regulatory processes.
Cheema has indicated that financial support for the rollout would be linked to measurable performance milestones rather than disbursed upfront, ensuring operators deliver on coverage commitments before receiving further backing. Officials frame the approach as a safeguard against public money funding infrastructure that never materializes, while still leaving operators room to turn a profit on the buildout over time.
Whether Pakistan reaches its 85 Mbps and top-50 ranking targets will depend largely on how quickly these reforms move from proposal to implementation, and on whether telecom operators sustain the pace of investment seen through the first half of 2026.
Leave a Reply