Dawn
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13:36 Jan 02, 2026
Federal Minister for IT and Telecommunications Shaza Fatima Khawaja announced on Friday that Pakistan would auction the 600 megahertz (MHz) spectrum next month to provide better internet speeds and roll out 5G in the country. In a meeting last week, the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) approved the process of auctioning the 600 MHz spectrum within two months. “The spectrum available for our telecom industry is extremely limited,” said the minister while addressing the media in Islamabad, and added that telcos “provide services in the country using just the 274 MHz”. “We are a spectrum-starved country,” she said. “We are a country of 240 million people with only 274 MHz of spectrum,” she stated, adding that “Bangladesh, with about two-thirds of Pakistan’s population, provides 600 MHz.” View this post on Instagram The spectrum is the range of radio frequencies that carries wireless signals for mobile phones, the internet, TV, and radio. Mobile networks like 3G, 4G, and 5G operate by sending data over speci...