Digital Pakistan: Broadband Subscriptions Soar to 100 Million
By Riaz Haq
CA

Broadband subscriptions in Pakistan have soared from two million in 2012 to 100 million now, according to the country's telecommunications regulator.
Ookla, recognized globally for its broadband speed testing, reports that Pakistan's average broadband download speed is 11.35 Mbps, while its upload speed stands at 10.7 Mbps. Thousands of kilometers of new fiber optic cable are being installed and mobile data usage in Pakistan has recently soared to 8,000 petabytes. Smartphone sales are also swelling. All signs are pointing to Digital Pakistan becoming a reality in the near future.

Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA), the nation's regulator, said in a statement that 87% of the population has access to the internet at the lowest rates. PTA claims the average download speed is 17.7 Mbps, and the upload speed is 11.3 Mbps, higher than the speeds measured by Ookla recently.
Rising broadband subscriptions have triggered a significant increase in Internet data, particularly with the spike in Internet traffic caused by the COVID-19 pandemic related lockdowns. Mobile data usage in Pakistan has recently soared to 8,000 petabytes.
Both the private sector and the government are laying thousands of kilometers of new fiber optic cable to deal with growing mobile broadband subscriptions and expanding coverage. In addition, the growth in international data traffic is being met with new high-speed undersea cables.
Pakistan and East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE) is 96 Tbps (terabits per second), 15,000 km long, privately owned submarine cable that will originate in Karachi, Pakistan and run underwater all the way to Marseilles, France via multiple points in the continent of Africa. It is being built as part of Digital Silk Road sponsored by China. Cybernet and Jazz are the local landing and global connectivity partners of PEACE Cable System in Pakistan. It will enable high-speed access to a variety of content, cloud computing, gaming and video streaming platforms.
The laying of PEACE undersea cable in Pakistan's territorial waters will begin in March, following government approval this month for Cybernet, a local internet service provider, to construct an Arabian Sea landing station in Karachi, according to Nikkei Asia. The Mediterranean section of the cable is already being laid, and runs from Egypt to France. The 15,000-kilometer cable is expected to go into service later this year.
An 820-kilometer China-Pakistan fiber optic cable has already been laid between the city of Rawalpindi, Pakistan in the south and the Khunjerab Pass, China in the north and has been operational since July, 2018. It is currently being extended to Karachi for connection to PEACE cable.
When completed, PEACE cable will be Pakistan's seventh highest bandwidth, lowest latency undersea connection to the global Internet system. Currently, there are six international submarine cable systems connecting Pakistan, including SMW3, SMW4, SMW5, IMEWE, AAE-1 and TW1. PTCL is the landing party in Pakistan for SMW3, SMW4, AAE-1 and IMEWE cable systems, operates cable landing stations in Karachi. SMW3, SMW4 and IMEWE land at Hawksbay, while AAE-1 lands at Clifton. Transworld Associates Private Limited (Transworld, or TWA) privately owns the TW1 cable system and is a member of the SMW5 consortium. Both TW1 and SMW5 land at Hawksbay and terminate at Transworld's cable landing station in Karachi.
The rapid growth in subscriptions has led to a huge increase in import of smartphones in the country. The nation’s mobile phone imports have swelled by 51.5% to $1.3 billion in July 2020-February 2021, from $865m in the same period last year. Pakistan has begun local assembly of low-cost smartphones to meet soaring demand. Since the unveiling of the mobile phone manufacturing policy in March 2020, several smartphone assembly plants have been set up to produce 18 million units annually.
Soaring broadband subscription, swelling data usage and huge increase in smartphone sales are all pointing to Digital Pakistan becoming a reality in the near future.
(Riaz Haq is a Silicon Valley-based Pakistani-American analyst and writer. He blogs at www.riazhaq.com)