Pakistan's 5G Dream Stalled by Fiber Gap and Costly Fees

The report from Daily Mirror flagged that Pakistan suffers from lack of physical infrastructure required to carry 5G signals, especially the network that connects cell sites to the core.

Globally, fibre-optic cable is the gold standard, capable of carrying terabits per second with latency measured in fractions of a millisecond. For 5G standalone networks, backhaul bandwidth above 10 Gbps per site and round-trip times under 5 milliseconds are essential.

Only about 15 per cent of cell sites are connected via fibre, while the remaining 85 per cent rely on microwave radio links that have fixed capacity ceilings, degrade in bad weather and cannot scale to 5G traffic load requirements, the report added.

The spectrum auction held in Islamabad in early March sold 480 megahertz of spectrum for $507 million and nearly tripled usable spectrum.

However, the spectrum auction, celebrated as a breakthrough, is only the first step "in a long and difficult journey," it said.

To fibre a single site costs between $10,000 and $20,000, and with tens of thousands of sites needing upgrades but such a capital commitment far exceeds the half‑billion dollars raised in the auction.

The problem is compounded by Pakistan's Right-of-Way fee structure, which levies PKR 35 to PKR 60 per metre every year, unlike India's one-time fee. This changes a one‑time capital expense into a permanent operational drain, discouraging investment.

Consequently, Pakistan ranked 76th out of 93 economies on the GSMA Fiber Development Index. "Without reform, fiberisation will remain the Achilles' heel of the country's 5G rollout," the report warned.

Pakistan also faces a demand-side problem as only one percent of handsets in the country support 5G. Roughly 90 per cent of locally assembled devices are currently limited to 2G or 3G compatibility, it noted.

- IANS