KARACHI:
Pakistan’s latest telecom amendment has been pulled into a familiar panic cycle. A law meant to accelerate fibre, towers and 5G infrastructure is now being discussed as if it gives telecom companies the right to walk into private homes, install equipment and fine ordinary citizens Rs50 million for resistance. That reading is not supported by the policy intent, the ministry’s clarification or a careful reading of the framework.
The bill should be understood for what it is: an attempt to fix Pakistan’s right-of-way problem. Every fibre line, tower, duct, pole and backhaul route requires permissions. In Pakistan, those permissions can get trapped between public bodies, housing societies, cantonments, municipal authorities, commercial estates and private management structures. The result is a country that wants 5G, AI, fintech, cloud services and digital exports while still struggling with the physical infrastructure required to carry them.
The National Assembly passed the Pakistan Telecommunication (Re-organization) (Amendment) Bill, 2026 on June 11, 2026. The Senate Standing Committee on IT and Telecom has since reviewed it and deferred further consideration for clause-by-clause scrutiny. Ministry officials have clarified that the proposed framework does not authorise forced acquisition or occupation of private property, and that private ownership rights remain protected.
The debate has confused three categories: individual private homes, organised private developments, and public or quasi-public land.
The bill defines private access for telecommunication infrastructure broadly. It includes individual private ownership, meaning property owned or possessed by a natural person. It also includes collective or organised private ownership, such as housing societies, cooperative schemes, residential or commercial estate management entities and similar bodies. Section 27A then sets out the access process for telecom licensees. For individual private ownership, the licensee must seek approval. If there is no response after the prescribed process, the matter may be referred to the appropriate government for resolution. For collective or organised private ownership, the treatment is more facilitative, including deemed approval in certain cases.
This distinction is being lost. The bill is not primarily about a telecom operator forcing a tower onto the roof of an unwilling homeowner. It is about preventing infrastructure that serves millions of users from being blocked by institutional gatekeepers. A housing society, commercial estate or public body cannot be treated exactly like an individual household when it controls roads, ducts, poles, common areas and access corridors that affect an entire community’s connectivity.
The Rs50 million fine has understandably attracted attention. Section 27B allows the appropriate government to impose a fine of up to Rs50 million on an owner, lessee, tenant or entity that obstructs or delays the grant of rights under Section 27A. That wording is broad, and the Senate is right to examine it carefully. But the purpose of the penalty is enforcement. Without enforcement, right-of-way reform becomes another polite request to bodies that already know how to delay, monetise or block infrastructure access.
The larger economic question is being missed. Pakistan has already crossed the spectrum milestone. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s (PTA) 2026 NGMS/5G auction framework covered spectrum in the 700, 1800, 2100, 2300, 2600 and 3500 MHz bands and was explicitly framed as supporting the further development of Pakistan’s digital infrastructure. The auction sold around 480 MHz of spectrum for roughly $507 million, with Jazz, Ufone and Zong securing allocations.
But spectrum is only the licence to build the road. It is not the road itself.
5G requires fibre backhaul, tower densification, power reliability, site access, permissions, ducts and local deployment. A country can auction spectrum and still fail to deliver meaningful connectivity if the infrastructure layer remains trapped in permissions. That is the uncomfortable truth behind the bill. Pakistan’s next economy will run on latency, bandwidth, uptime, coverage and affordability.
The traffic of the future will be AI-enabled services, cloud platforms, digital payments, remote work, logistics systems, telemedicine, online education, connected farms, small exporters, freelancers, call centres, industrial automation and public services moving across digital rails. Every serious economy is building the physical capacity to move that traffic. Pakistan cannot stay competitive if fibre deployment is treated as a private negotiation with every local authority, society manager and institutional gatekeeper.
Global evidence supports the direction of travel. The World Bank treats digital connectivity as a foundation for jobs, private-sector growth, public services and economic resilience. The International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) work on developing economies also shows that higher broadband and mobile broadband penetration are associated with measurable improvements in GDP per capita. The numbers should be handled carefully. Broadband does not automatically create prosperity. Connectivity without affordability, devices, skills, competition and productive use will underperform. But the reverse is clearer: without reliable connectivity, the next layer of economic growth becomes structurally constrained.
Pakistan’s IT export ambition depends on high-quality networks. Freelancers need stable broadband, not heroic patience. Fintech needs resilient rails. AI tools require data movement and cloud access. Education and healthcare platforms cannot scale on patchy service. Rural productivity cannot improve if digital access stops at elite urban centres. Even basic governance becomes harder when connectivity is uneven and unreliable.
The strongest argument in favour of the amendment is simple: Pakistan needs a national connectivity framework that treats telecom infrastructure as enabling infrastructure. Roads required land access rules. Power grids required line corridors. Pipelines required rights, safety standards and compensation frameworks. Digital infrastructure now sits in the same category of national importance, provided the law is drafted with due process and clear limits.
The law is being misread when it is described as a forced occupation mechanism. The bill’s policy direction is sound: Pakistan must remove right-of-way bottlenecks if it wants 5G to mean anything beyond a spectrum auction. The legal language should be tightened where needed, especially around individual ownership and penalties. But the reform itself is necessary.
Pakistan has spent decades treating connectivity as a service issue. It is now infrastructure policy. The countries that understand this will move faster into AI, digital services, fintech, logistics, cloud, automation and exportable work. The countries that do not will keep announcing ambitions over networks that cannot carry them.
The author is a senior executive, operator and policy-facing strategist working across digital infrastructure, fintech, crypto, energy and emerging technology
