People living in the far-flung areas of Pakistan, mainly the females will largely benefit from 3G and 4G services, said Chinese scholar Prof. Zhou Rong, senior Fellow of Chongyang Institute for Financial Study of Renmin University.
In an article published by China Economic Net on Tuesday, he quoted Pakistani Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Syed Aminul Haque as having said that 3G and 4G services will be provided soon to far-flung areas of Balochistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan. Right now the government of Pakistan was committed to promoting the country’s technological capacity to develop a globally competitive IT sector and industry.
As the minister put it, the project would meet the objective of providing infrastructure in order to ensure access and connectivity for people, provide broadband services to the locals, improve their life standard, create job opportunities, empower women and so on.
Some people might not understand why the project may help Pakistani women a lot. We know that the phenomenon of male superiority still exists in Pakistan. Although there have been a large number of female military people, female medical workers, female journalists, female judicial workers, female scholars, and policewomen in Pakistan, women are still not encouraged to appear in public places. However, online work driven by 3G and 4G can prevent women from contacting people face to face in public.
Relatively speaking, for Pakistan, women’s participation in online employment is and will be more acceptable. The federal government now decided to give subsidy of Rs 650 million, and about two million people may benefit from it. To a certain degree, it has successfully removed pay-wall restriction on coverage of COVID-19.
But popularizing 3G and 4G in Pakistan has never been an easy job. Take online class as an example.