PTA addresses 98% of 31,266 telecom consumers’ complaints | Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF)

Pakistan Press Foundation

PTA addresses 98% of 31,266 telecom consumers’ complaints

Pakistan Press Foundation

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has addressed around 30,912 consumers complaints which are almost 98 percent of the total complaints received against telecom operators during 2012-13.

The authority received 31,266 complaints against telecom operators including Cellular Mobile Operators (CMOs), Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL), Local Loops, Long Distance Internationals (LDIs), Wireless Local Loop (WLL), Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and other service providers during the year as compared to 33,310 complaints during previous year.

According to latest data issued by PTA here on Wednesday, PTA resolved the complaints after pursuing them with relative operators. The number of complaints against CMOs has the highest share (64 percent) in total complaints followed by PTCL (34 percent).

With respect to current 128.93 million cellular subscribers, the number of complaints against CMOs is a small ratio, compared to complaints versus subscriber base ratio of PTCL.

Interestingly, the number of complaints against CMOs during 2012-13 has dropped by 7.0 percent as compared to 2011-12, whereas complaints against PTCL (the fixed line incumbent operator) have increased by 7.0 percent during the same period. The authority said that in collaboration with operators, it has taken appropriate actions to reduce the problems faced by cellular mobile users.

A deeper analysis of the cellular complaints revealed that out of the 19,938 complaints received against mobile services and Mobile Number Portability (MNP), 43.5 percent were related to misuse of mobile services followed by MNP (20.4 percent).

Over the last two years, complaints related to mobile number portability (MNP) issues have also decreased by 10 percent of the total cellular mobile complaints received by PTA.

Although the uptake of cellular mobile services has profound benefits for the country, the low literacy rate and some mischievous elements trouble the customers with wrong calls, obnoxious and unwanted communication. Therefore, this category has the highest rate of complaints in the cellular sector.

The illegal practices such as obnoxious, fraudulent calls/SMS constitute 17.3 percent of the complaints while billing, Quality of Service (QoS), Value Added Services (VAS), poor customer issues were about illegal practices and others form the rest.

Looking at the complaints received against each cellular operator, the maximum number of complaints (5,139) were against Mobilink since it has the highest subscriber base as well, followed by Telenor, Ufone, Warid and CMPak with 4,157, 4,478, 3,087 and 2,436 complaints, respectively.

The percentage breakup of the total complains by each operator received by PTA showed that Mobilink had the highest number of complaints at 27 percent followed by Telenor 23 percent, Ufone 21 percent, Warid 16 percent and CMPak 13 percent. PTCL has virtual monopoly over fixed line sector. Therefore, the nature and number of complaints against the company depicts the overall state of the local loop sector in Pakistan.
The authority received 10,811 complaints against PTCL in various categories. However, faults/disruption in service constitutes the major chunk of the complaints.

The infrastructure of the incumbent needs immediate attention to curb this major portion of complaints. Provision of service, QoS, billing issues and other complaints make up the rest of the complaints.

Daily Times


Comments are closed.