ISLAMABAD:

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Wednesday apprised the media that 5G spectrum auction would be held on March 10 and no change would likely be made in the schedule.

PTA expects the auction will eventually help increase the earnings of telecom companies in the country. Pakistan is offering 597 megahertz (MHz) in several bands in the auction and the three existing telecom operators have been mandated to purchase a minimum of 100 MHz. The media was informed that the auction would be conducted using a multi-round electronic clock auction format, with the main allocation stage starting on March 10 and 2,600 MHz and 3,500 MHz bands would be offered during the first round. After the auction, 5G rollout will take three to six months as fresh infrastructure needs to be installed.

PTA Chairman Major General (Retd) Hafeezur Rehman said that the auction would follow improved service quality in both telephony services as well as data speed. “Around 50 million new users have been added to the system during last five years but only 10 MHz was increased in the 2021 spectrum auction,” he said, adding that improved data service and enhanced coverage would increase the average revenue per user (ARPU) for the telecos.

ARPU is a key performance indicator that measures the average revenue generated by a company from each consumer within a specific timeframe – monthly or annually. “We started with $0.7 and now ARPU has reached $1.3; therefore it is likely to increase as more data is consumed by the subscribers,” the PTA chairman said. “PTA expects mobile broadband speed to improve by around 25% following the auction.” He pointed out that the government had offered many incentives to the telecom firms in the new spectrum auction, but obligations to improve service quality and coverage area had also been increased.

“This will help the country to embrace further technology upgrading like 6G, not like 5G, which has been delayed,” he said. The government has eliminated the right-of-way fee, which used to be around Rs36,000 per km annually. This will encourage fiberisation projects.

The chairman said that telecom operators had already placed orders for 5G equipment, while local manufacturing of 5G-enabled smartphones had commenced, with 500,000 to 600,000 units produced so far.

Other measures taken to facilitate faster rollout of services after the auction are spectrum sharing, relaxation of certain regulatory terms and incentives for network expansion. “Operators have been given one year to make necessary capital investment 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 apart from Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta, while fibre-to-the-site (FTTS) ratio will rise from 20% to 35% by 2035. Also, the minimum download speed for 4G has been increased from 4 mega bites per second (Mbps) to 20 Mbps in 2026-27 and to 50 Mbps by 2030-35.

For 5G, the minimum download speed will rise from 50 Mbps initially to 100 Mbps by 2030-35, with latency targets reduced to 35 milliseconds. Upload speed is benchmarked at 20% of download speed across both technologies. Applications, along with a $15 million bank guarantee, must be submitted by February 27, the director general said. Qualified bidders will participate in mock auctions before the main allocation. If demand exceeds supply in any spectrum category, prices will rise in successive rounds.