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Telecom operators pour $178 million Into 5G rollout
Aftab Maken
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s three major cellular mobile operators (CMOs) have collectively invested roughly $178.6 million to upgrade over 1,100 sites for 5G service since the government’s landmark spectrum auction earlier this year, according to figures shared by the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication. Jazz has put in about $59.7 million, Zong $98.9 million, and Ufone an estimated $20 million, with all three operators forecasting further spending in the upcoming fiscal year — Jazz projecting another $30 million and Zong roughly $40 million more.
The spending follows the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s (PTA) March 10 auction of 480 MHz of spectrum across the 700, 2300, 2600 and 3500 MHz bands, which raised more than $509 million for the national exchequer. Jazz emerged as the largest bidder, securing 190 MHz, followed by Ufone with 180 MHz and Zong with 110 MHz. Officials at the time described the sale as a milestone meant to relieve years of “spectrum starvation” that had degraded mobile service for millions of subscribers, with 4G improvements promised within months and 5G service targeted for Islamabad and the provincial capitals soon after.
The Rollout So Far
Nearly six months on, upgrades have reached 1,136 sites nationwide, and operators have also been assigned E-Band spectrum to support the high-capacity backhaul links that 5G networks require. But the pace and quality of the rollout have become a flashpoint. In Karachi — the country’s largest and most commercially important city — only a few hundred of a targeted 2,632 towers had gone live by August, according to recent reporting, well short of Phase I goals even as 6G trials advance elsewhere in the world.
Independent testing cited by industry outlets puts real-world 5G speeds in well-covered urban pockets between 100 and 400 Mbps, a clear jump over 4G but far below the multi-gigabit figures touted in controlled demonstrations. The core bottleneck, according to telecom analysts, is Pakistan’s thin fibre backbone: only 15–18% of cell towers are connected via optical fibre, forcing most sites to rely on microwave links that struggle to meet 5G’s capacity and latency demands. Right-of-way approval delays across overlapping municipal and cantonment authorities, high capital costs, and chronic power outages have compounded the problem.
Consumers Push Back
Public frustration has been building on social media and in parliament alike. Members of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Information Technology pressed officials on why users are still experiencing slow speeds, dropped calls and unreliable service despite the spectrum sale and 5G launch, with lawmakers noting the problems extend well beyond rural areas into major cities.
A separate wave of criticism has centered on device compatibility: 5G will not activate on iPhones, several Samsung models, or Google Pixel devices until carriers push the required network configuration updates — a technical gap that left customers who had specifically upgraded their phones for 5G locked out. One Karachi-based subscriber, commenting online, said he couldn’t get stable service despite living above his carrier’s flagship experience center, and suggested he might switch networks altogether. Similar complaints have surfaced from users across other cities.
Even before the auction, the Telecom Operators Association of Pakistan had warned the government against rushing next-generation networks without addressing device affordability, cautioning that 5G risked deepening the digital divide by benefiting a narrow urban, higher-income slice of users while roughly a quarter of mobile customers still don’t use mobile broadband at all more than a decade after the country’s first 4G auction.
What Operators Say
Executives have defended the pace of investment. JazzWorld CEO Aamir Ibrahim said the spending would help the company strengthen its network and extend reliable connectivity to millions of Pakistanis. Zong’s Saira Mirza, Deputy Director for Corporate Brand Communications and Sustainability, has pointed to community speed tests showing median 5G downloads around 220 Mbps in well-served areas as evidence the technology is delivering real gains, even as coverage continues to expand.
Officials maintain that Pakistan’s 5G build-out is designed as a multi-phase, near decade-long project, with licence conditions requiring operators to hit minimum fibre-to-the-site ratios and expand coverage steadily through the early 2030s. For now, though, the gap between the auction’s fanfare and the everyday experience of subscribers — buffering video calls, patchy indoor signal, and phones that can’t yet connect to the new network — remains the story consumers are telling on their own timelines, long before the official rollout is complete.
