Pakistan’s 5G Reaches 24 Cities With 1,782 Sites

Pakistan’s Ministry of IT told the National Assembly that 5G services cover 24 cities with 1,782 sites, with load-shedding, device costs, and infrastructure gaps slowing the wider rollout.

Pakistan’s 5G story has a headline number, and a far more complicated reality underneath it. The Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication told the National Assembly during Question Hour that Pakistan’s 5G network, launched on March 20, currently covers 24 cities including Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, and Quetta, with 1,782 5G sites established nationwide.

Expansion to additional cities will proceed in phases, the ministry said, with stability and service quality on the existing network taking priority before further rollout.

The city-level figures reveal both progress and concentration. Karachi has emerged as the most active expansion zone, with its site count rising from 50 to 385 between July and September 2026, representing 295 new installations in three months.

The city now accounts for 21.5% of all 5G sites in the country, and the ministry projected that Karachi’s site count would exceed 1,000 as expansion continues.

Parliamentary Secretary for IT Sabeen Ghouri told the National Assembly that Pakistan has 210 million mobile users and 161.7 million mobile broadband subscribers, figures that underline the scale of the unserved gap between total mobile subscribers and those with access to Pakistan’s newest network generation.

One piece of reassurance for existing users: the Ministry of IT confirmed that no SIM card replacement is required to access 5G. Subscribers need only a compatible device and coverage in their area. More than 600,000 5G-enabled mobile phones were locally manufactured between January and August 2026, though access remains constrained by device costs, with the minimum price of a 5G-compatible handset currently standing at Rs36,000.

The government is considering tax reductions, manufacturing incentives, and duty-free equipment imports to bring prices down and widen access.

Perhaps the most candid admission in the ministry’s written response concerns infrastructure reliability. The government acknowledged that prolonged load-shedding, electricity theft, and vandalism are directly affecting mobile service quality.

A high-level committee has been established to ensure uninterrupted electricity supply to mobile towers, examining dedicated power feeders, smart grids, and industrial feeders as potential solutions, alongside instructions to maintain backup systems including batteries, solar power, and generators across the network.

The PTA is conducting field surveys to assess service quality alongside the 5G expansion, continuing the regulator’s increasingly active enforcement posture seen in its recent October deadline for operators to fix coverage gaps in Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

Pakistan’s 5G ambitions are real and the infrastructure momentum is building. But with 24 cities covered out of hundreds across the country, a Rs36,000 device floor, and power supply problems threatening reliability, the gap between the 5G Pakistan wants and the 5G its citizens can actually access remains wide; and the path to closing it runs through challenges that go well beyond spectrum and towers.