Pakistan’s mobile networks now reach hundreds of millions of people. Using them is a different story.

A new GSMA report puts Pakistan’s mobile internet usage gap at roughly 140 million people, individuals who live within mobile broadband coverage but do not go online. That figure places Pakistan among the countries with the largest such gaps worldwide, trailing only India’s 710 million and sitting alongside Nigeria.

The number reframes how Pakistan’s connectivity problem should be understood. For years, the policy conversation centred on tower rollout, spectrum auctions, and network coverage. The GSMA’s State of Mobile Internet Connectivity 2026 report suggests that chapter is largely closed. The harder question now is why so many people who can already reach the internet choose not to.

Coverage Without Connection

The GSMA Consumer Survey 2025 traces the gap to a familiar cluster of barriers: limited digital literacy, affordability, and relevance. In Pakistan specifically, family-related restrictions also surface as a distinct obstacle, a factor the report flags as more pronounced here than in many peer markets.

Even among people who use mobile internet occasionally, the experience itself discourages regular use. The report cites inconsistent connectivity, safety and security concerns, and gaps in digital skills as recurring complaints, with usage patterns diverging sharply between urban and rural populations.

That distinction matters for policy design. A gap driven by coverage requires infrastructure spending. A gap driven by affordability, skills, and trust requires a different toolkit entirely, one aimed at demand rather than supply.

The Price of a Smartphone

Device cost sits at the centre of the problem. Across low- and middle-income countries, an entry-level internet-enabled handset consumed 44 percent of average monthly income for the poorest fifth of the population by the end of 2025, according to GSMA figures. For a household already stretched thin, that is not a discretionary purchase; it is often an impossible one.

The GSMA estimates that pushing entry-level device prices down to the $20–30 range could bring smartphones within reach of an additional 1.6 to 2.2 billion people globally. For Pakistan, that math suggests real headroom: policies that encourage local handset assembly, sharpen competition among manufacturers, and expand financing for first-time buyers could move a meaningful share of the 140 million toward getting online.

Literacy Programmes Need a Different Target

Digital-literacy campaigns in Pakistan have historically emphasised basic awareness, teaching people that mobile internet exists and roughly how to use it. The GSMA findings point toward a narrower, more practical focus instead: digital payments, e-commerce, government service portals, and education and job platforms.

Awareness alone does not convert a covered household into an active user. Relevance does. Someone who cannot see what mobile internet actually does for their income, their children’s schooling, or their access to public services has little reason to adopt it, regardless of signal strength.

What Existing Users Are Telling Operators

The barriers do not disappear once someone starts using mobile internet. For existing users, data affordability and network quality become the dominant constraints on how much they use it. Slow speeds and patchy coverage in already-connected areas cap engagement even among people who are technically online.

This creates a two-sided challenge for operators and regulators alike: bring new users in while keeping existing ones satisfied enough to expand their usage. Neither goal is served by treating “coverage” as a finished project.

Why This Matters for Pakistan’s Digital Economy

A gap of 140 million people is not an abstract statistic; it is a direct constraint on how far digital commerce, financial inclusion, and e-governance can scale in Pakistan. Every fintech app, e-commerce platform, and digital ID rollout is effectively capped by how many people can and will use mobile internet in the first place.

Closing even a fraction of that gap would expand the addressable market for Pakistan’s digital economy far more than any single network upgrade could. It would also extend financial services and government platforms to populations that infrastructure spending alone has failed to reach.

The Policy Shift This Data Demands

The GSMA’s conclusion for Pakistan is direct: the next phase of digital inclusion cannot be built on network expansion alone. Cheaper devices, skills training tied to practical use cases, more reliable connectivity, and stronger safety assurances now matter more than additional coverage.

What this data ultimately exposes is a mismatch between how Pakistan has measured digital progress and what actually drives adoption. Coverage statistics have looked good for years. Usage statistics have not moved nearly as fast, and until affordability, relevance, and trust are treated as policy priorities in their own right, that gap is likely to persist regardless of how much more spectrum gets deployed.