Govt Withdraws Controversial Telecom RoW Bill After Months Of Senate Deadlock

The federal government is withdrawing the Pakistan Telecommunication (Re-organization) (Amendment) Bill, 2026, ending a months-long attempt to overhaul the country’s right-of-way rules for telecom infrastructure after the legislation failed to deliver the outcomes it was designed for. The withdrawal will be formally moved in the Senate today, with Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Shaza Fatima Khawaja seeking leave of the House under Rule 115 to pull the telecom ROW bill, which was first laid before the Senate on June 15, 2026.

A Bill That Never Cleared The Senate

The bill’s path through parliament was rocky from the start. It passed the National Assembly on June 11, a day before the federal budget was presented, and reached the Senate four days later. From there, it stalled almost immediately.

Senators from the PPP and PML-N deferred the measure in committee, questioning why telecom towers and related equipment had been folded into legislation that was supposed to be about right of way for fibre. Lawmakers also objected to a clause under which a property owner’s failure to respond to two official notices would be treated as implied consent for telecom installations, warning it could undermine constitutional property rights.

The backlash was significant enough that the Pakistan Peoples Party withheld support entirely, with Senator Sherry Rehman stating the party would not allow any IT or right-of-way related legislation through the Senate without thorough scrutiny by the standing committee. The prime minister subsequently formed a separate review committee to examine the bill’s most contested sections and recommend changes.

Despite that review process and a rewritten draft submitted over the following weeks, the bill never regained enough support to clear the Senate. Today’s withdrawal closes that chapter.

What The Bill Tried To Fix

The legislation set out to replace Pakistan’s outdated RoW framework under the Pakistan Telecommunication (Re-organization) Act, 1996, with three separate mechanisms, covering Independent Private Property, Common Development Property and Public Property.

The most contentious piece required telecom licensees to get a property owner’s prior written consent and sign a formal agreement before exercising RoW on private land. Without that agreement, licensees would have had no legal path to proceed on that property at all.

For common development property, things like roads, utility corridors, parks and shared spaces within private developments, the bill proposed a time-bound process. A property manager who didn’t respond within 30 days would see the matter escalated to the government, which would then have 45 days to rule after hearing both sides. Public property followed the same 30-day and 45-day structure, just routed through the relevant public authority instead.

The draft also tried to standardize costs. Underground RoW on common development and public property would carry no fee at all, and temporary overground installations would be exempt too. Fixed installations like poles and small cells could also skip fees, subject to rules the federal government would set separately.

Protections And Penalties Built Into The Draft

Beyond access, the bill addressed what happens after RoW is granted. Property owners, development managers and public authorities would have been barred from unreasonably interfering with lawfully approved installations, while licensees would be required to promptly repair any damage and restore affected sites.

One provision stood out for protecting building owners specifically: even where RoW had otherwise been approved, permanent buildings couldn’t be used for telecom works without separate written consent from the owner or an authorized representative.

To back the framework with enforcement, the draft proposed fines for anyone who willfully obstructed a licensee’s lawful RoW activity. Disputes would go to a designated district officer for a decision within 45 days, with a further appeal route to the Tribunal within 30 days.

Why It’s Being Pulled Instead Of Fixed Again

Sources say the government reviewed the amendments after the extended committee process and concluded the bill, even in its revised form, wasn’t going to deliver the regulatory outcomes it was meant to achieve, particularly a durable resolution to RoW disputes that have slowed telecom rollout for years.

That’s a notable shift from earlier in the process, when officials were still defending the bill’s intent. The IT ministry had issued a statement in June insisting the RoW provisions did not permit operators to enter private property without an owner’s permission or due legal process and framed the reforms as an important step toward attracting infrastructure investment and improving services for millions of Pakistanis. Withdrawing the bill entirely, rather than pushing a further amended version back through committee, suggests the government has concluded the underlying structure needed more than another round of edits.

Why This Still Matters For The Telecom Sector

RoW disputes remain one of the biggest practical obstacles to expanding fibre, mobile towers, small cells and other connectivity infrastructure across Pakistan. Operators have spent years navigating a patchwork of provincial and local rules, with delays and inconsistent charges cited repeatedly as reasons rollout has lagged behind demand.

That frustration hasn’t disappeared with the bill’s withdrawal; it’s just back at square one. Officials had told the Senate IT committee earlier this year that all provinces had already abolished right-of-way charges administratively, with the legislation intended to lock that abolition into law so it couldn’t be reversed by future provincial or local governments. Without the bill, that protection now exists only as policy, not statute, leaving it vulnerable to reversal down the line.

Industry stakeholders have consistently pushed for a clear, uniform RoW regime that cuts delays and administrative friction rather than adding another layer of dispute mechanisms. The government’s own framing of this withdrawal, as clearing the way for a fresh approach, signals another draft is likely coming rather than the issue being shelved.

What Comes Next

The real test now is whether the next attempt learns from what sank this one. The bill collapsed not because lawmakers opposed fibreisation, every committee session on record shows broad agreement on that goal, but because the mechanics for accessing private and public land felt rushed and, to several senators, constitutionally shaky.

Any future draft will need to separate the genuinely uncontroversial parts, like formalizing the RoW fee abolition already in effect, from the property-access provisions that require the kind of consultation this version skipped. Pakistan’s fiberization targets don’t get easier to hit while the legal framework underpinning them stays unresolved, and this withdrawal means operators are back to relying on inconsistent provincial rules for however long the next version takes to draft.