China Mobile Pakistan (CMPak), operating under the Zong brand, has urged the Ministry of IT and Telecommunication (MoITT) to apply industrial electricity tariffs to its cloud and integrated data centre (IDC) operations, warning that high energy costs are undermining the competitiveness of local data centres and discouraging global cloud providers from localising infrastructure in Pakistan.
In a letter to MoITT Secretary Zarrar Hasham Khan, with copies sent to NEPRA, the Power Division and SIFC, CMPak said it has made substantial investments in digital infrastructure and diversified into cloud and IDC services in line with the government’s Digital Pakistan vision. The company operates a Tier-III data centre at its Islamabad headquarters and plans additional facilities in Lahore and Karachi to support government digitisation, local content hosting, data sovereignty and enterprise cloud services.
CMPak said it faces a structural disadvantage in government tenders as telecom operators are excluded from Special Technology Zones (STZs) and therefore cannot access tax holidays and other fiscal incentives available to IT companies, despite offering comparable cloud and data centre services. This, it argued, creates an uneven playing field and weakens cost competitiveness.
The company maintained that cloud and IDC operations should be assessed based on the nature of services provided rather than the legacy licensing status of the parent telecom operator. It said its cloud and data centre businesses directly support national priorities including e-government platforms, indigenous cloud infrastructure, foreign investment attraction and high-value IT job creation.
CMPak also highlighted electricity pricing as a critical constraint. Data centres are energy-intensive, and despite telecoms being declared an industry, operators have been unable to secure industrial power tariffs due to prolonged litigation. Without relief, the company warned, Pakistan’s cloud ecosystem would struggle to scale, while high power costs would continue to deter international providers from investing locally.
The company called on MoITT to advocate for industrial electricity tariffs for cloud and IDC facilities and to champion fiscal and regulatory support for data centre infrastructure as a strategic national asset.
