ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said on Wednesday that 5G spectrum auction would be held on March 10 and no changes were likely to be made in the schedule, saying that the sale was likely to fetch between $300-$700 million.

The authority is offering 597 megahertz (MHz) in several bands in the upcoming auction and three existing telecom operators have been mandated to obtain a minimum of 100 MHz in the auction process.

“With the prescribed rate, even if 300 MHz is obtained by the telecommunication operators without any competitive bidding, the government will get $300 million,” PTA Director General Licensing retired brigadier Aamir Shahzad told a media briefing.

“And if all the 597 MHz is sold at auction at a slightly competitive rate, $700 million will be available for the government, but this scenario is less likely to happen,” he added.

Shahzad said that the auction would be conducted using a multi-round electronic clock auction format, with the main allocation stage starting on March 10. He said the 2600 MHz and 3500 MHz bands would be offered during the first round.

He added that after the auction process, the rollout of 5G services would take between three and six months as certain infrastructure was needed for the fresh spectrum.

Meanwhile, PTA Chairman Hafeezur Rehman said that the auction would lead to improved quality of service and data speed.

“Around 50 million new users have been added in the system during the last five years, but only 10MHz was increased in the 2021 spectrum auction,” the PTA chairman said.

“Improved data service and enhanced coverage will also increase average revenue per user (ARPU) for telecommunication operators,” he said.

The ARPU is a key performance indicator that measures the average revenue generated by a company from each consumer within a specific timeframe, monthly or annually.

“We started with $0.7 and now the ARPU has reached $1.3. Therefore, it is likely to increase as more data is consumed by the subscribers,” Rehman said.

“The authority expects mobile broadband speeds to improve by around 25 per cent following the auction,” he said.

He said that the government had offered many incentives to telecom companies in the new spectrum auction, but obligations to improve the quality of service as well as coverage area had been increased.

“This will help the country to embrace further upgradations like 6G and not like 5G, where we have been delayed,” the PTA Chairman said.

He added the government had also eliminated the right-of-way fee that used to be around Rs36,000 per kilometre annually; this, he said, would encourage fiberisation projects.

The chairman also said that telecom operators had already placed orders for 5G equipment, while local manufacturing of 5G-enabled smartphones had commenced, with 500,000 to 600,000 units produced so far.

He said the other measures being taken to facilitate the faster rollout of services after the auction were options for spectrum sharing, relaxation of certain regulatory terms and incentives for network expansion.

“Operators have been given one year to make the necessary capital investments without upfront spectrum payments, allowing them to focus on improving service quality,” Rehman added.

However, the operators will have to expand 5G coverage to additional cities apart from Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta, while fiber-to-the-site ratios will increase from 20 per cent to 35pc by 2035.

Besides, the minimum download speeds for 4G service have been increased from four megabytes per second (Mbps) to 20Mbps in 2026–27 and to 50Mbps by 2030–35.

For 5G, minimum download speeds will rise from 50Mbps initially to 100Mbps by 2030–35, with latency targets reduced to 35 milliseconds. Upload speeds are benchmarked at 20pc of download speeds across both technologies.