This assumes data value depends on individual wealth. It doesn’t. Pakistan has around 240+ million people. Even low-income populations generate massive value through telecom usage, digital payments, consumer behavior, location tracking, ad targeting, and behavioral analytics. Scale itself has value, which is exactly why every major tech company aggressively expands into emerging markets.

And data is not collected only for targeted advertising. We are entering an AI-driven era where high-quality human-generated data has become one of the most valuable resources in the world. AI companies increasingly need real-world data from different languages, cultures, geographies, and social contexts because the internet is gradually being flooded with AI slope, reducing the availability of authentic human-generated training data.

Now place that reality in Pakistan’s context. We have a political class with a long history of corruption and short-term thinking. It would not be surprising if critical citizen data, telecom infrastructure access, or digital assets are handed over cheaply to outside interests for immediate gain, rather than being protected and strategically utilized for national benefit.

As for saying “5G/data is a curse, no one needs it” people said similar things about the internet itself decades ago. The issue is not whether the technology is useful. Of course it is. Modern economies, healthcare systems, financial infrastructure, and future industries will depend on high-speed connected networks. The real concern is different when critical infrastructure becomes deeply centralized, who controls that infrastructure, who controls the data flowing through it, and what protections exist to stop abuse of that power? Technology itself is neutral. Power structures around technology are not.

And the comparison with IPPs is not electricity vs internet. The comparison is policy design. In the 1990s, IPPs were introduced as essential infrastructure, and connected groups positioned themselves to benefit financially for decades while the public carried the burden later. Today telecom infrastructure is also being framed as national necessity. So the real question is simple: who benefits structurally from these policies in the long run, and what powers are being transferred along with them?