Following cabinet approval, the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunications (MoITT) plans to establish the Infrastructure Sharing Framework.
This was mentioned by Member Telecom Omar Malik during a webinar titled “Adopting 5G to Positively Impact the Environment: A Roadmap for Pakistan” held on Wednesday by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI).
Telecom Infrastructure
He also stated that measures such as spectrum and infrastructure sharing will be critical in enhancing connectivity, decreasing network disruptions, and lowering environmental impacts.
He stated that since 2020, the overall deployment of fibre optic in Pakistan has expanded from 124,000 km to 190,000 km, citing a research undertaken in partnership with the World Bank that indicated optic fibre penetration as a critical impediment.
Furthermore, he stated that economic insecurity and consumer affordability are two other problems impeding the country’s 5G rollout.
In his opening remarks, Brigadier Mohammad Yasin (Retired), Senior Advisor Emeritus, SDPI cited political and economic instability, a higher tax on IT services, a weak fibre optics infrastructure, expensive frequency spectrum, a lack of dollars, and uneconomical smartphone prices as key challenges resulting in declining investor interest, deteriorating IT services, and delaying the launch of 5G in Pakistan.
According to Khalid Khan, Chairman of the Central Asian Cellular Forum, advancements to 3G and 4G have had transformative effects on other sectors such as transportation, finance, and so on.
He emphasised human resources as the most valuable exportable commodity and recommended the promotion of competitive engineering skills in order to capitalise on the global IT sector’s potential expansion.
He urged the government to view supportive policy measures as part of a bigger vision of connectivity rather than as revenue-generating outlets.
Instead of hastening the rollout of 5G, Abdul Rehman Usmani, VP Network, Jazz, emphasised that the best way is to establish use cases and a viable business model to avoid consumers from switching to 4G owing to poor usefulness.
He emphasised the importance of creating a favourable ecology through R&D centers, a regulatory structure, and cost-effective spectrum denominated in PKR.
According to Dr. Fareeha Armughan, Research Fellow at SDPI, 5G will accelerate modern financial services, cloud computing, and AI, with banks already eager to migrate to quick, touchless, and easy-to-use financial services over traditional banking.
There is no better tool for looping in vulnerable groups in the economy and pushing the needle on the whole circle of poverty alleviation than integrating mobile and financial services.
Aslam Hayat, ICT Regulatory Expert, stated that the adoption of 5G has the potential to improve energy efficiency, catalyse the uptake of renewables, efficient resource management through the promotion of AI, IoT, and the use of sensors, among other things, reduce greenhouse emissions through the adoption of smart technologies, particularly in the transportation sector, and improve air quality.
However, he emphasised that these have drawbacks, such as a sharp increase in electricity demand and consumption, an increase in e-waste load as consumers switch to the latest 5G-enabled devices, and negative consequences for the environment, biodiversity, habitats, and ecosystems due to infrastructure development.
Fawad Sarwar, Solutions Architect at Ericsson Australia, stated that while telecom and IT generate 1.4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, economic and industrial digitalization will have a 50 percent impact on emissions by 2030.
He explained how sensors, artificial intelligence, and IoT-enabled devices may be used to minimise emissions from the construction and transportation sectors.
He emphasised a three-pronged approach of sustainable network evolution, network expansion and modernization, and intelligent network operation to break the energy curve and reduce environmental footprint.
According to Maryam Shabbir Abbasi, Research Coordinator at the University of Vermont, industrialised countries offer emission reduction success stories obtained through the implementation of 5 G-enabled technologies in enterprises.
She emphasised the need of 5G in improving early warning systems, connection, intelligence, and information distribution during natural catastrophes such as the recent floods.
In his final remarks, Dr. Abid Qaiyum Suleri, Executive Director of SDPI, emphasised that the future penetration of 1 trillion networked devices will raise lithium consumption by four times and energy demand dramatically.
To fulfil energy demand, he emphasised novel self-energizing and energy harvesting techniques, as well as catching electromagnetic waves created by these interconnected devices using micro-antennas.
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