ISLAMABAD: While the government is confident to roll out 5G mobile services by the end of 2022, the key telecom operator of Pakistan has pointed out that this will not be viable for the industry because the country currently needs optimum utilisation of 4th Generation (4G) technology.

“I believe Pakistan should not jump on the 5G bandwagon immediately because the infrastructure needs work and the business use cases are premature to act upon,” Aamir Ibrahim, chief executive officer of Jazz said while addressing participants of a webinar titled ‘Expectations, Experiences, & Reality of the 5G Journey’. It was organised by the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSMA).

Mr Ibrahim added that regarding consumers, if their demand was faster speeds, that can be provided through a more robust 4G infrastructure.

“I firmly believe that the ecosystem needs further nurturing and areas of policy developed to entice operators. 5G requires fundamental changes in both investment strategy, spectrum policy and deployment,” he said, adding implementation of 5G requires much higher upfront investment costs.

He said adopting and implementing a 5G network requires a concerted effort from all stakeholders to overhaul outdated policies, ensure availability of affordable smart devices, strike partnerships, garner investments, release spectrum, develop digital skills, create demand, and foster innovation.

The countries that have commercially launched 5G achieved close to 70pc or more 4G penetration first.

As per the latest figures, Pakistan’s 4G penetration stands at 43pc presently while around 45pc of the current subscriber base in Pakistan does not use mobile broadband and 15pc of the population lives without any telecom coverage, Mr Ibrahim said.

Vikram Sinha, from Indosat Ooredoo - telecommunication provider of Indonesia - expressed similar views and said more than just a speed game was needed and it

was also clear that addressing the issue of slow mobile data service can be cleared with the support of policies.

“For us, the 5G journey has to be much more meaningful than the need to create big noise,” Mr Sinha said.

Indosat launched its 5G services in Indonesia’s city of Surakarta in June this year and has since then expanded to other cities including Jakarta and Surabaya.

Joachim Horn, chief technology and information advisor of Smart Communications, Inc. of Philippines talked about the launch of 5G in the country.

“We decided to launch 5G when smart phone prices fell to around $150, but on the enterprise side, the situation was completely different,” he said

While responding to a query over lessons learned from 5G launches in advance economies, industry experts said that landscapes and policies differ significantly from one country to another.

He gave examples of Japan and China who have allocated free 5G spectrum, while South Korea offers tax breaks to operators to compensate for rollout costs.

Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2021