The National Assembly Standing Committee on Information Technology has approved the Pakistan Telecommunication (Re-organization) Amendment Bill aimed at speeding up internet expansion and mobile network services across Pakistan.

The bill aims to adjust telecom laws to reduce procedural hurdles and allow telecom operators to deploy fiber optic cables and mobile towers more efficiently. The bill also increases government oversight of telecom regulators and state-run institutions to improve governance in the sector.

Another major provision of the bill simplifies Right of Way (RoW) rules to make it easier to lay fiber optic networks. Licensed operators will be given clearer legal access to public and private land for installing, operating, and maintaining telecom infrastructure. The bill also states that the board of the National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC) will be constituted under the State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) framework.

Under the amendments, the federal government will have the authority to determine the remuneration of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) chairman and its members. PTA’s financial operations will also be placed under the Public Finance Management Act, 2019, to improve transparency, accountability, and fiscal discipline.

The committee also deferred approval of the Electronic Transactions Amendment Bill 2026. The review of the Ministry of IT’s Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) was also postponed due to the ongoing National Assembly session. The committee decided that PSDP projects will be reviewed at its next meeting.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has confirmed that it will not include a post-auction spectrum trading window in the design of the 5G spectrum auction.

The decision rejects stakeholder proposals that sought to give operators flexibility to adjust their spectrum holdings after the bidding process.

During the consultation process, some stakeholders warned that bidders could end up with uneconomic or fragmented spectrum holdings as demand shifts between frequency bands during competitive bidding rounds. To address this, they suggested introducing a trading window or a similar mechanism before the assignment stage to allow operators to rationalise their spectrum portfolios.

In response, PTA stated that a trading window is not part of the auction framework and will not be added. The authority said the existing structure of the allocation and assignment stages is adequate to produce efficient outcomes without the need for a secondary adjustment process.

PTA also clarified that spectrum caps will remain in force throughout the auction, regardless of whether any spectrum lots remain unsold. The regulator added that the post-auction spectrum cap policy will be handled separately. As a result, the current cap of 348.5 MHz for International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) spectrum holdings will continue to apply during the bidding process, even if some spectrum is left unassigned.