akistan’s internet bottleneck is the silent barrier to an e-commerce revolution that could transform 240 million lives: a page hangs; a checkout freezes; a rider blinks out in a signal dead zone. A village craftswoman stays cut off from the world that already exists, because the connection simply… goes out.

Pakistan’s e-commerce isn’t just growing, it’s rewriting the economy. The numbers don’t lie: retail e-commerce surged to $ 1.4 billion in 2024 (PCMI), fueling platforms where millions shop with their phones. Fixed broadband lags painfully behind global average. 4G coverage exists in most populated areas but rural areas still suffer from spotty signals, congestion and fall back to slower networks. Yet smart phones are now in over 51 percent of hands. That’s why roughly 80 percent of online shopping happens over phone.

But the engine stumbles exactly where the signal fades. Cash-on-delivery still clings to 7 percent of transactions not out of choice but out of necessity. Unreliable internet makes digital payments a nightmare: OTPs never arrive, payment gateways time out, transactions fail at the final click, driving cart abandonment rates to 70 percent or higher and costing merchants billions in lost sales every single year. With only low single-digit percentages of retail online so far, the market remains wide open. It is projected to hit $12 billion by 2027. This is a mobile-first revolution, unfolding one frustrated tap at a time.

Not for everyone. Beneath the surface lies a digital divide - the gap between those with access and those without. It’s not just slow internet; it’s a wall keeping millions from digital payments, e-commerce and online earning platforms. 130 million people, mostly in villages, are shut out from digital wallets and online shopping. Add the gender gap. Without fixing this divide, e-commerce stays a city-only story, and the dream of formalising Pakistan’s economy through digital trade remains a dream.

The consequences are especially severe for women entrepreneurs in rural areas. Social restrictions already shrink their world to the boundaries of the village, unreliable internet becomes the final, invisible gatekeeper denying them the possibility of independence, silently delaying the birth of the next generation of female-led businesses.

The gig economy feels the squeeze the sharpest. Riders lose orders, freelancers lose clients, Zoom calls freeze mid-pitc, and the country’s best talent quietly buys one-way tickets to places where the internet works.

Zaryab Ali, a software engineer from Mardan, works remotely for a US-based client from a rooftop setup just to catch a reliable 4G signal. Poor connectivity remains his biggest hurdle. “During 2 am stand-up calls, my video often freezes mid-sentence,” he says. “The client assumes that I’m unprepared, but I’m simply waiting for the network to respond.” Critical file uploads stall for hours, pushing deadlines and damaging his professional reputation, despite his strong technical skills. Global teams move at full speed, but Zaryab and thousands of talented professionals across Pakistan are held back by slow, unstable internet.

The damage is systemic and accelerating. Every frozen Zoom frame, every upload that dies mid-progress, every portfolio page that refuses to load is a vote of no-confidence in Pakistan as a place to do serious digital business. Clients don’t wait; they move on to the where the internet works. We are not just losing jobs. We are losing entire careers, companies and futures.

The infrastructure gap is closing far too slowly. Billions of rupees in the Universal Service Fund remain unspent, auctions are repeatedly postponed, fibre deployment is largely confined to privileged corridors, and low-Earth-orbit satellite solutions, when they finally arrive, remain priced beyond the reach of most households.

Pakistan has the talent, the demographic dividend and the market appetite to become a leading digital economy in Asia. What it lacks is the political and regulatory resolve to treat high-speed internet as critical national infrastructure rather than a discretionary service. The clock is ticking louder than ever. Every month that passes without a national emergency-level push on connectivity is another month that countries like Indonesia, Vietnam and Bangladesh pull further ahead in the digital race. Pakistan already has the fifth-largest freelance workforce on the planet, the youngest population in Asia and an e-commerce growth rate that makes investors salivate.

The e-commerce revolution will remain urban, partial and painfully incomplete until reliable connectivity reaches every union council in the country.

The revolution is here. The talent is abundant; the demand undeniable. The only thing holding Pakistan back is the wire that was never laid, the tower that was never built and a policy mindset that treats high-speed internet like a premium add-on rather than the essential utility it became years ago.

The writer is founder and CEO of Apricocia. He can be reached at [email protected]