Will 5G Launch in next 10 months as Government Claimed?

As per the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority Rules, the government would require eight to 10 months after the policy directive issuance to complete the process of the 5G launch in the country. Previously during a meeting on the issuance of funds for IT development, Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Amin ul Haque ensured that government will try its best to launch 5G by the end of June 2023 in all major cities.

While this statement is given by the IT minister, industry stakeholders and senior government officials have termed it to impossible and some also said that 5G is extremely difficult to be launched by the end of December 2023, due to the economic situation and situation of the telecom market in the city.

MoITT published draft policy guidelines for 5G on 15 December 2021 on its website. For this policy, the government engaged  MoITT and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) for market readiness in relation to 5G adoption in the country. After a consultation, the feedback shared by industry stakeholders linked the launch of 5G incentives such as a  reduction in GST and WHT.

The government has planned to communicate to all stakeholders that it is going to launch 5G and will draft policy directives accordingly.  This policy will be approved by the Economic Coordination Committee of the Cabinet (ECC) at first and then by the federal Cabinet to be chaired by the prime minister. The collectively approved policy will be shared with PTA and FAB.

After getting the policy directive for the auction of 5G the PTA would issue an RFP (Request for Proposal) for the hiring of consultancy services. This overall process will take a span of almost three months altogether.

After this, the bids submission process will take place, which will take two more weeks for technical evolution. 10 days would be dedicated to agreement signing. The consultant would take two more months to complete the report and submit it. When approved, the report would be sent to ECC and later on to the cabinet where approvals related to benchmarks, prices, bands, etc over six months would be granted. Later on, the auction would be held and the spectrum award and payment would take 30 days.

Overall situation and timeline seem quite ideal but industry officials are of the opinion that these deadlines are extremely difficult to be met and they expect more delay to the launch of 5G in Pakistan.

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