Pakistan Is Building a Rs708 Million Secure Phone Network for Government Officials

Pakistan’s IT Ministry is launching a Rs708 million secure phone network for government officials, with end-to-end encrypted calls, a private app store, and a network completely separate from public telecom infrastructure, hosted on NTC’s own data centre.

The project is called Pak Awaz, and it has just received in-principle approval from the Central Development Working Party, clearing the formal funding pathway for what will be one of Pakistan’s most significant government cybersecurity infrastructure initiatives to date.

What Pak Awaz Does

The Pak Awaz Secure Mobile Communication Ecosystem is designed with one core objective: making government communications sovereign and protected from cyber threats. The project will provide approximately 10,000 secure mobile devices to government officials, hardware specifically configured for protected communications rather than commercial off-the-shelf smartphones connected to public networks.

The system will operate on a private mobile communication network entirely separate from the public telecom infrastructure that civilian and commercial users access. This separation is fundamental to the project’s security architecture, a government network that shares infrastructure with public networks inherits the vulnerabilities and interception risks of those networks.

Within that private network, the project will deliver end-to-end encrypted voice calls, video calls, and a messaging platform for official communications. A private app store will be established specifically for government applications, creating a controlled software environment where only verified and security-cleared applications can be installed on official devices.

Government applications, including the e-Office system, will be accessible through the secure mobile platform, meaning officials can conduct official digital work through devices and channels that are protected at the infrastructure level rather than relying on consumer applications running on public networks.

The entire system will be hosted on the National Telecommunication Corporation’s data centre, keeping the infrastructure within government ownership and avoiding the dependency on foreign cloud hosting that creates sovereignty concerns for sensitive communications. Implementation of the project will be carried out by NTC.

Why This Matters

Government officials in Pakistan currently communicate largely through commercial mobile networks and consumer applications, the same infrastructure and platforms used by the general public, with the same vulnerability profile. Senior officials discussing sensitive policy matters, security briefings, or inter-ministry coordination are doing so on networks that are technically accessible to interception by sophisticated actors.

The Pak Awaz project addresses that exposure directly. By creating a parallel, government-owned communication infrastructure with end-to-end encryption and a controlled software environment, it brings Pakistan’s government communication security closer to the standards maintained by governments in countries that have invested in sovereign communication infrastructure.

The Rs708 million cost, spread across a 10,000-device deployment with associated network and platform infrastructure, represents a meaningful but proportionate investment for a government cybersecurity initiative of this scope.

The Bottom Line

Pak Awaz is a straightforward but important step: Pakistan’s government acknowledging that sensitive official communications cannot remain on the same public infrastructure that everyone else uses, and investing in a dedicated secure alternative. With CDWP approval secured and NTC designated for implementation, the project has cleared its most significant administrative hurdle. Execution is what comes next.