The government is likely to receive between $300 and $ 700 million from the upcoming spectrum auction scheduled for March 10 and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has announced that no changes are likely to be made in the auction schedule.
The PTA is offering 597 megahertz (MHz) across several bands in the upcoming auction, and the three existing telecom operators have been mandated to obtain a minimum of 100 MHz.
“With the prescribed rate, even if 300 MHz is obtained by the telcos without any competitive bidding, the government will get $300 million,” PTA Director General Licensing, Aamir Shahzad explained.
“And if all the 597 MHz is sold at auction at a slightly competitive rate, $700m will be available for the government, but this scenario is less likely to happen,” he added.
Media was informed that the auction will be conducted using a multi-round electronic clock auction format, with the main allocation stage starting on March 10, and the 2600 MHz and 3500 MHz bands will be offered during the first round.
He added that after the auction process 5G service rollout will take between 3-6 months as installation of infrastructure is needed for fresh spectrum.
Meanwhile PTA Chairman Hafeez-ur-Rehman said that the auction will follow improved quality of service in both telephony and data speed.
“Around 50m new users have been added in the system during the last five years, but only 10MHz was increased in the 2021 spectrum auction,” Chairman of PTA said, adding, “Improved data service and enhanced coverage will also increase average revenue per user (ARPU).”
“We started with $0.7 and now ARPU has reached to $1.3, therefore it is likely to increase as more data is consumed by the subscribers,” the PTA chairman said, adding that he expects mobile broadband speeds to improve by around 25 per cent following the auction.”
He said that the government has offered many incentives to the telcos in the new spectrum auction, but obligations to improve the quality of service as well as coverage area have been increased.
“This will help the country to embrace further upgradations in the technology, like 6G service, not like 5G, where we have been delayed,” he said.
The government has eliminated the right-of-way fee that used to be around Rs36,000 per km annually; this move will encourage fiberisation projects.
The chairman also said that telecom operators have already placed orders for 5G equipment, while local manufacturing of 5G-enabled smartphones has commenced, with 500,000 to 600,000 units produced so far.
The other measures taken to facilitate the faster rollout of services after the auction include options for spectrum sharing, relaxation of certain regulatory terms, and incentives for network expansion. “Operators have been given one year to make necessary capital investments without upfront spectrum payments, allowing them to focus on improving service quality,” he added.
However, the operators will have to expand 5G coverage to additional cities beyond Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta, while fibre-to-the-site (FTTS) ratios will increase from 20 to 35pc by 2035.
Besides, the minimum download speeds for 4G service have been increased from 4 megabits per second (Mbpc) to 20 Mbps in 2026-27 and to 50 Mbps by 2030-35.
For 5G, minimum download speeds will rise from 50 Mbps initially to 100 Mbps by 2030-35, with latency targets reduced to 35 milliseconds. Upload speeds are benchmarked at 20pc of download speeds across both technologies.
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