Pakistan’s mobile operators remain well short of the fibre connectivity required for nationwide 5G deployment, with the telecom sector’s overall tower fibreization standing at just 17.9 percent, according to official documents.
The documents reveal that Jazz leads the industry with 22 percent tower fibreization, followed by Zong at 19 percent, Telenor at 16 percent, while Ufone trails at only 9 percent, exposing a major infrastructure gap for high-speed 5G services.
Under the NGMS/5G licence conditions, all cellular mobile operators are required to raise their Fibre-to-the-Site (FTTS) ratio to at least 20 percent during Phase-I (2026-28), with the target increasing to 35 percent by Phase-IV (2032-35) to ensure sufficient backhaul capacity for expanding 5G networks.
The government has assigned E-band spectrum for high-capacity wireless backhaul and is facilitating Right of Way (RoW) approvals to accelerate fibre deployment and speed up the nationwide rollout of 5G infrastructure.
