ISLAMABAD : The recent floods starting in the month of August have exposed the fragility of Pakistan’s telecommunications infrastructure and the weaknesses of broader structural environment within which mobile networks operate, according to a report by Islamabad-based research house Tabadlab.

The report, authored Naeha Rashid, Maira Sheikh and Alina Khan, argues that without immediate intervention, the industry is prone to collapse.

“Such a collapse would devastate not just Pakistan’s broader digital transformation journey, but also the lives of Pakistan’s 195 million telecommunications subscribers and 123 million broadband subscribers.”

As 3,386 cell sites became inactive across flood-impacted provinces there was suspension of mobile connectivity and internet services and as a result thousands of flood victims could not contact or reach out to people, they knew or relief teams.

Relief teams report difficulties in communicating with the departments concerned due to connectivity issues.

To overcome short-term connectivity barriers, companies offered free on-net voice call services, but these solutions are short-term band-aids to a bigger set of issues.

The report has highlighted that Pakistan’s underlying infrastructure was vulnerable, especially given the realities of accelerating climate change, disaster events, so creating a resilient and robust telecom sector that can handle such events was critical for both immediate relief efforts, and also for our long-term digital viability.

Telecommunications forms the base layer of the entire digital ecosystem, and if the existing range of issues were not tackled collectively Pakistan’s digital ecosystem will be permanently compromised.

It has been suggested that Pakistan needs to have a connectivity-specific contingency plan.

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2022