Lawmakers Slam Poor Mobile Services Across Pakistan as PTA Pins Hopes on 5G Rollout

Members of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunication on Tuesday expressed serious concern over the deteriorating quality of mobile and internet services across Pakistan, particularly in major cities such as Islamabad and Karachi.

The committee met under the chairmanship of Syed Aminul Haque and received briefings from Federal Minister for IT and Telecommunication Shaza Fatima Khawaja and senior officials of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority on mobile service quality, 5G deployment, prolonged power outages, and the expansion of telecom infrastructure.

During the meeting, committee member Mahesh Kumar said lawmakers had repeatedly raised the issue of poor telecom services over several years without seeing meaningful improvement.

“I have been a member of the IT committee for several years, and we are now tired of discussing the quality of service,” he said, adding that Ufone’s service in Karachi was particularly poor.

Committee member Sadiq Memon also criticized the current state of mobile connectivity, saying call services had become increasingly unreliable.

He said consumers were facing poor-quality mobile calls even in major urban centers, including Islamabad and Karachi.

Committee chairman Syed Aminul Haque said Ufone’s service had become extremely poor, while committee member Rana Iradat Sharif raised concerns that Telenor’s service could also deteriorate following its merger with Ufone.

The committee subsequently summoned officials of Pakistan Telecom Mobile Limited, which operates Ufone, to appear at its next meeting and explain the reasons behind the decline in service quality.

Members also proposed calling representatives of the country’s major mobile operators to a future meeting to answer questions about network performance, call quality, and internet connectivity.

Briefing the committee, the PTA chairman said the regulator had changed the way it assessed internet speeds by shifting from average-speed measurements to median-speed indicators, which he said provided a more realistic picture of consumer experience.

He said internet speeds had previously appeared stronger in Islamabad, but performance declined sharply outside the capital.

“In my own constituency, the internet speed was only one megabit per second,” the PTA chairman told the committee.

He said Pakistan had so far launched 5G services on 440 telecom towers, adding that network quality was expected to improve gradually as the rollout expanded.

The PTA chairman also acknowledged that the regulator was not claiming that overall quality-of-service conditions had substantially improved.

He said PTA previously conducted joint quality-of-service surveys with telecom companies, but its teams were now independently carrying out district-level surveys to assess mobile network performance.

The regulator also highlighted prolonged power outages as a major challenge for telecom services.

According to the PTA chairman, Pakistan experienced an average of 10 hours of load-shedding in May, while some areas faced outages lasting up to 18 hours. He said Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had constituted a committee to examine whether telecom towers could be exempted from load-shedding.

Federal IT Minister Shaza Fatima Khawaja said telecom companies had started outsourcing their towers and that the committee formed by the prime minister would make recommendations regarding their electricity supply and operational requirements.

“We request that telecom towers be provided electricity 24 hours a day,” she said.

The minister argued that consumers continued to pay for internet services even during power outages and should therefore not lose connectivity because telecom towers lacked electricity.

She said the government was also working with the private sector on the solarization and modernization of telecom towers.

According to the minister, these measures could help telecom companies save around 10 million litres of fuel annually.

Shaza Fatima said mobile data consumption had increased considerably over the past several years, placing additional pressure on existing networks.

She said Pakistan had previously been operating with 274 megahertz of spectrum and that an additional 480 megahertz had been auctioned in March.

According to the minister, the completion of the spectrum auction meant that the next stage was the expansion of the 5G rollout.

“The faster the legislation is completed, the faster the rollout will take place,” she said while responding to criticism over the pace at which the proposed telecom legislation was being pursued.

The minister said the government agreed that internet services required significant improvement.

She also informed the committee that an average user in Pakistan spent around Rs 285 per month on internet services. She further stated that 97 percent of citizens had access to broadband internet, according to figures presented during the briefing.

The minister said the proposed telecom amendment bill could improve right-of-way procedures, which are considered essential for the installation and expansion of fiber-optic networks and other telecom infrastructure.

She added that much of Pakistan’s telecom equipment was imported and that insufficient investment in the sector had limited the expansion and modernization of networks.

The committee called for greater accountability from mobile operators and urged the government and regulator to ensure that additional spectrum, tower expansion, and the rollout of 5G lead to measurable improvements for consumers rather than remaining limited to policy announcements.