PTA tells NA panel: Pakistan TikTok YouTube users hit 100m and 96m, yet internet quality stays poor
The Parliament House building in Islamabad, shown in a file photograph. (NOT the committee meeting itself — a file photograph of Parliament House.)
Islamabad: Pakistan TikTok YouTube users now number in the tens of millions — around 100 million on TikTok and 96 million on YouTube — yet the figures, laid before the National Assembly Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunication on Tuesday, were followed almost at once by a far less comfortable question: if there are this many users, why is the internet still so poor? Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Chairman Major General (retd) Hafeez ur Rehman told the committee that nearly 150 million videos are watched and uploaded on TikTok from Pakistan every day, while YouTube users in the country watch roughly 560 million videos a day. Pakistan, he said, ranks first in the world for YouTube viewership.
What the numbers say
The briefing also heard that millions of calls and messages pass through WhatsApp daily, and that growing use of social media and artificial intelligence has pushed data consumption sharply higher. Federal Minister for Information Technology Shaza Fatima Khawaja told the committee that 5G has now reached 24 cities and that 18 million people are using it. She said the previous government had introduced 4G while the present government had held the 5G spectrum auction, and that steps were being taken to improve telecom services.
MPs push back: why does service get worse after every meeting?
The committee’s members, though, spent less time on the numbers than on their complaints. Despite two years of continuous effort, the committee observed, internet quality has not reached the required standard — even Karachi and Islamabad face connectivity problems, service in smaller cities and remote districts is in places almost negligible, and signals drop frequently during WhatsApp calls. Member Ahmad Atiq said mobile networks barely function in his constituency and along the route to Karachi, that even WhatsApp calls disconnect in Islamabad, and that telecom services seem to deteriorate after every committee meeting. His question was blunt: what is the point of expanding 5G when users in rural areas are still struggling to get 3G? Another member, Asia Ishaq, raised the deterioration of 4G services and asked whether lawmakers would have to approach the Supreme Court to compel operators to improve quality.
PTA’s answer: notices, stay orders and stolen towers
The PTA chairman said the authority had visited 41 districts with telecom operators to assess service quality and inspect mobile towers, directing operators to improve their quality of service within three months wherever shortcomings were found. Five show-cause notices were issued in the preceding three months where no improvement followed, he said — but recovery of the amounts imposed remains pending because operators obtained stay orders from the courts, which is why show-cause notices are treated as a last resort. He added that around 70 percent of 5G services in Karachi have been rolled out and about 2,300 telecom towers upgraded to support 5G. Among the causes of poor quality, he cited prolonged power outages — load-shedding of 12 to 16 hours a day in rural areas knocks towers out — while the minister said entire mobile towers had been stolen in some areas, along with the diesel and generators meant to keep them running. The committee also deferred consideration of the Electronic Transactions Amendment Bill, 2026, to its next meeting.
