Pakistan’s 100 million WhatsApp users send around 12 billion messages and make one billion voice and video calls every single day, the chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority told parliament on Tuesday — figures that show just how completely the country’s daily life now runs on one messaging app.
Major General (retd) Hafeez ur Rehman shared the numbers while briefing the National Assembly Standing Committee on IT and Telecom on the use of social media and digital communication platforms in the country. The figures work out to an average of roughly 120 messages a day for every WhatsApp user in Pakistan.
WhatsApp by the Numbers
The headline figures put Pakistan among the heaviest WhatsApp-using countries on the planet. With 100 million users, the platform has become the default channel for everyday conversation, office work and business deals alike — from family groups and school circulars to customer orders and official coordination.
Twelve billion messages a day means about 500 million messages every hour, or more than 138,000 every second. On top of that, Pakistanis make one billion calls on the app daily, underlining how voice and video calling has moved away from traditional phone networks and onto data-based apps.
YouTube “Number One in the World” — and TikTok’s 150 Million Viewers
The chairman also told the committee that 96 million Pakistanis use YouTube, and that 560 million videos are watched on the platform in Pakistan every day. According to the chairman, those numbers make Pakistan the top country in the world for YouTube video viewing — a claim he presented to the committee, though no independent international benchmark was cited alongside it.
He gave figures for TikTok as well: 100 million registered accounts in Pakistan, with around 150 million Pakistanis watching and uploading videos on the app as regular viewers. If accurate, that would mean more than half the country engages with the short-video platform.
Big Numbers, Poor Calls: The Committee’s Complaint
The giant user numbers landed in the middle of a tense session. Committee members used the briefing to press the regulator over the poor quality of telecom services, with one member complaining that WhatsApp calls get disconnected even in Islamabad and asking how operators could be expected to deliver better service when users in major cities face constant connectivity problems.
The chairman acknowledged there was considerable room for improvement. He said the regulator had inspected mobile towers and visited 41 districts together with telecom operators to identify the problems hurting network quality. He also pointed to PTA’s recent field inspections of 115 telecom sites between September 30 and October 7, which examined coverage, voice and data quality, and backup power arrangements.
Rehman named electricity outages as one of the biggest obstacles to better service, saying mobile towers need a steady power supply and that improved electricity availability would significantly lift network performance. Federal IT Minister Shaza Fatima Khawaja added that theft was another cause of disruption, saying entire towers, diesel supplies and generators were being stolen.
5G and IT Exports: 1.8 Million Users in 24 Cities
On the next generation of networks, the minister told the committee that no spectrum auction had been held since the government led by Nawaz Sharif, which left the country on 4G services. She said the present government had since held a 5G spectrum auction, and that 1.8 million people now use 5G in Pakistan, with the service being introduced in 24 cities.
She also reported that IT exports had reached 3.14 billion dollars in the current fiscal year, and that the government aimed to raise them to 5 billion dollars by next year. She linked rising data consumption to social media and artificial intelligence.
Notably, the briefing set out no new targets or timelines for fixing service quality — so the lawmakers’ complaints about dropped calls and weak signals will have to be answered through the corrective measures the PTA says it is asking operators to carry out. The committee’s questions made clear that scrutiny of network quality will continue in parliament.
Read also: NA committee’s earlier grilling of PTA over WhatsApp call drops and Pakistan’s three-pillar National Digital Master Plan
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