ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) mentioned on Wednesday that 5G spectrum public sale can be held on March 10 and no adjustments had been more likely to be made within the schedule, saying that the sale was more likely to fetch between $300-$700 million.
The authority is providing 597 megahertz (MHz) in a number of bands within the upcoming public sale and three current telecom operators have been mandated to acquire a minimal of 100 MHz within the public sale course of.
“With the prescribed fee, even when 300 MHz is obtained by the telecommunication operators with none aggressive bidding, the federal government will get $300 million,” PTA Director Common Licensing retired brigadier Aamir Shahzad instructed a media briefing.
“And if all of the 597 MHz is bought at public sale at a barely aggressive fee, $700 million shall be accessible for the federal government, however this state of affairs is much less more likely to occur,” he added.
Shahzad mentioned that the public sale can be performed utilizing a multi-round digital clock public sale format, with the primary allocation stage beginning on March 10. He mentioned the 2600 MHz and 3500 MHz bands can be provided in the course of the first spherical.
He added that after the public sale course of, the rollout of 5G companies would take between three and 6 months as sure infrastructure was wanted for the contemporary spectrum.
In the meantime, PTA Chairman Hafeezur Rehman mentioned that the public sale would result in improved high quality of service and information velocity.
“Round 50 million new customers have been added within the system over the last 5 years, however solely 10MHz was elevated within the 2021 spectrum public sale,” the PTA chairman mentioned.
“Improved information service and enhanced protection may also enhance common income per person (ARPU) for telecommunication operators,” he mentioned.
The ARPU is a key efficiency indicator that measures the common income generated by an organization from every client inside a selected timeframe, month-to-month or yearly.
“We began with $0.7 and now the ARPU has reached $1.3. Due to this fact, it’s more likely to enhance as extra information is consumed by the subscribers,” Rehman mentioned.
“The authority expects cell broadband speeds to enhance by round 25 % following the public sale,” he mentioned.
He mentioned that the federal government had provided many incentives to telecom firms within the new spectrum public sale, however obligations to enhance the standard of service in addition to protection space had been elevated.
“This may assist the nation to embrace additional upgrades like 6G and never like 5G, the place we’ve got been delayed,” the PTA Chairman mentioned.
He added the federal government had additionally eradicated the right-of-way price that was once round Rs36,000 per kilometer yearly; this, he mentioned, would encourage fiberisation tasks.
The chairman additionally mentioned that telecom operators had already positioned orders for 5G tools, whereas native manufacturing of 5G-enabled smartphones had begun, with 500,000 to 600,000 models produced thus far.
He mentioned the opposite measures being taken to facilitate the sooner rollout of companies after the public sale had been choices for spectrum sharing, leisure of sure regulatory phrases and incentives for community growth.
“Operators have been given one yr to make the mandatory capital investments with out upfront spectrum funds, permitting them to concentrate on enhancing service high quality,” Rehman added.
Nevertheless, the operators should increase 5G protection to extra cities aside from Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta, whereas fiber-to-the-site ratios will enhance from 20 % to 35pc by 2035.
Apart from, the minimal obtain speeds for 4G service have been elevated from 4 megabytes per second (Mbps) to 20Mbps in 2026-27 and to 50Mbps by 2030-35.
For 5G, minimal obtain speeds will rise from 50Mbps initially to 100Mbps by 2030-35, with latency targets diminished to 35 milliseconds. Add speeds are benchmarked at 20pc of obtain speeds throughout each applied sciences.
