PTA directs mobile operators to improve quality of service | Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF)

Pakistan Press Foundation

PTA directs mobile operators to improve quality of service

ISLAMABAD: The Senate Standing Committee on Cabinet (Cabinet Secretariat and Inter-Provincial Coordination) on Friday directed the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to ask mobile phone operators to improve the quality of their service.

The Senate Committee met under the chairmanship of Shahid Hassan Bughti with members of the committee Mrs Kalsoom Parveen, Mir Wali Muhammad Khan Badini, Begum Najma Hameed, Mrs Rehana Yahya Baloch, Mrs Fauzia Fakhar-uz-Zaman and Abdul Ghaffar Qureshi in 0the meeting.

The Committee members directed the PTA to ask cellular operators to improve speech quality and improve Short Message Service (SMS) success rate.

PTA Chairman Dr Mohammed Yaseen briefed the committee about the overall performance of mobile service providing companies and said the number of mobile subscribers stood at 111.1 million, showing 10 percent growth rate double than last year.

He said Mobilink lead the mobile subscribers market with 30.2 percent share followed by Telenor 24.8 percent, Ufone 18.7 percent, Warid 14.4 percent and Zong 11.9 percent and added today mobile penetration in the country stood at 65.2 percent (Oct 2011) in comparison with 60.4 percent (June 2010) depicting growth of 8.4 percent.

He said according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Information Technology Report 2010-11, Pakistan ranked number 1 in the Internet and Telephony Competition and mobile sector had turnover of Rs 262 billion with cumulative investment of $1268 million in last two years.

Dr Yaseen said all the cellular mobile operators were mandated to maintain Quality of Service (QoS) as laid down in the license and the PTA had been continuously monitoring the performance in terms of service quality of all cellular mobile operators regularly since 2002 through surveys/drive tests across the country.

He said the Cellular Mobile Network (CMN) Regulations 2011 had been prepared in consultation with operators that details the survey methodology and now the surveys were conducted as per the same.

He said the PTA conducted QoS survey in 2009 and Qos of all Cellular Mobile Telephony Operations (CMTOs) was found below the licensed target therefore show cause notices were issued to all CMTOs and out of 5 CMTOs (Telenor, Warid and Ufone) took stay order in court whereas 2 CMTOs (Mobilink and CMPak) were issued determination for improvement of service quality within 30 days.

Source: Daily Times