COVID-19 pandemic has, undoubtedly, hit the entire world. It swallowed millions of precious lives including old and young people—an irreparable loss for generations. The pandemic ceased the cycle of economic growth and pushed the world towards multiple crises including unemployment and hunger.
The novel coronavirus introduced a new way of challenging life, which is being termed as the new normal, wherein the businesses will no more operate as usual but need to be altered accordingly to be survived.
For instance, the industry of healthcare and pharmaceutical turned the crisis into an opportunity. From hospitals to drug makers, medicines importers to pharmacy retailers ultimately cashed in the situation.
Some players in the business of textile and chemical sectors also joined the foray and started off producing face masks, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), and hand sanitizers.
The online education system could not flourish in a crisis, which could have served the young generation better in Pakistan
Similarly, e-commerce is witnessing a boom worldwide and in Pakistan as major players scaled up logistics support and business volume to cater to a vast market. Some of the new players also made their entry and some people had good and bad experiences of shopping online for the first time in their lives.
Unfortunately, the online education system could not flourish in the crisis, which could have served the young generation better in Pakistan and opened a new way of learning across the country in the long run.
Imagine, a student sitting in a small city or villages could attend online class with an affordable personal computer and broadband. Not only he saved his precious time, resources of travelling and living expenses but he could effectively contribute positively to undereducated society through sharing the acquired skills and education. At least, his attitude and his behaviour can reflect positively among the people of his surroundings.
Buying a computer system or smartphone can be an overcoming issue for a wide segment of society but the connectivity is not in the hand of the layman. Thousands of the dropped out students from university-level, including girls, could continue their education with mobile broadband even. Millions could acquire skills and high school education whereas an internet integrated primary education system could be set up in the available buildings in rural areas. In this way, the country with the second-largest kids out of school (22.8 million) could enrol millions of students in the learning system with much fewer investments and infrastructure within a short period.
In the technological era, it is a stark contrast that students living in the urban cities do have access to online education whereas those residing in small cities are deprived of this basic need due to absence of infrastructure, which is causing an upsurge of illiterate society in Pakistan—a society that becomes a burden instead of an asset to the country.
Similarly, online clinics, to some extent, resolve the health issues of the underprivileged society. Some projects are working successfully through the support of the nurses and healthcare professionals but they need to be expanded under the platform of the government or major private sector hospitals.
And then there are vast opportunities to earn money online through the internet not only for the local companies for international companies as well. Remittances of over half-billion dollars come through freelancers of IT services every year as per SBP data. A part of the ICT services, various other services such as legal, medical transcription, virtual assistance could also be learnt and practised for earning but not without the digital highways, that is, broadband internet.
According to the telecom regulator, out of 167 million subscribers of telephony services, there are 83 million broadband internet users in the country.
The slow penetration of the internet is not an issue in the country’s urban area but the uninterrupted and slower internet connectivity has been a challenge in major cities as well.
During the lockdown, the consumption of the internet immensely increased. Sadly, a significant urban population was also affected by the poor connectivity of the internet, which exposed the strength of telecom infrastructure in Pakistan. Some universities could not maintain an online classes system whereas a majority of the students found constantly interrupting internet services that hamper the learning process.
Besides connectivity, affordability is also a challenge. The telecom regulatory bid to introduce a student broadband package but it failed to come up with the required need. Operators who invested billions in Pakistan are also facing low revenue streams and asked for the government support in terms of relief in various fees and enhancement in spectrum capacity.
Instead of going towards launching 5G, the government with all stakeholders should expand the existing 4G broadband internet service across the country, which could be more accessible, affordable and beneficial to a large population of the country within the short period.
The vision of Digital Pakistan by the incumbent government could not be pushed forward until the root causes are addressed by the government to provide an affordable and speedy internet connection to the people. After that, the rest of the other needs such as roti, kapra and makan could be easier for the masses.
Economic studies have proven that there is a positive relationship between broadband penetration and GDP growth in both high and low-income markets as a ten percentage point increase in broadband penetration grows national GDP by 1.5 percentage points.
The writer is a digital marketing and communication professional. He can be reached at sirfyasir@gmail.com