KARACHI: PM asks PTA to conduct new phone service survey
By Bahzad Alam Khan
KARACHI, July 20: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has directed the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to carry out another quality of service survey of Mobilink rather than fine the country’s largest mobile phone company on the basis of a previous survey. This was disclosed by PTA director Mustafa Kamal Pasha at a press briefing on Wednesday.
In April the PTA had warned Mobilink that it would slap a Rs350 million fine and terminate its licence if the mobile phone company did not respond to a show-cause notice within 30 days.
The PTA made it clear that the show-cause notice was issued against Mobilink when a recent PTA survey found that the quality of service offered by the company was “below the minimum standards specified in the licence.”
But the PTA decided on July 8 to disregard the earlier survey, on the basis of which it had issued show cause notice, and to conduct another quality of service survey from the first week of August.
Mr Pasha said that Mobilink had sent a request to the prime minister along with a letter saying that $300 million assistance offered to it by a European company had been cancelled because of the action taken by the PTA.
“The PTA decided not to take action against Mobilink on the basis of the survey carried out in February. It will carry out another crash survey from August 1 and determine the quality of service now being offered by Mobilink,” he said.
The PTA official said the prime minister was quite within his rights to ask the telecoms regulator not to take action against Mobilink for the time being. “All regulators, including the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority and the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority, are under the cabinet division. They have to comply with the directives issued by the prime minister,” he explained.
A press statement issued by the PTA on July 8 said: “In a letter written to Mobilink, the Authority said that the arguments, the operator presented during the hearing in response to PTA show-cause notice on poor QoS, were just to avoid the allegations on one pretext or the other. The Authority said that the plea taken by the licensee regarding factors influencing QoS were unfounded and unreasonable.
“During the hearing on June 9, 2005, the Authority also observed that the management of the company did not take appropriate measures to improve QoS offered by the company and as a result the subscribers continued to suffer.
“The Authority, on the request of the company, has given four weeks grace period to improve the quality of service and another technical survey to check the QoS offered by the company would be launched immediately after the period expires.”
The PTA official said that Mobilink had the maximum share in the mobile phone market (60 per cent), with around 2,500 cell sites across the country. He conceded that the cellphone service offered by Mobilink was below the mark.
The regional director of the PTA, Rizwan Hydri, also spoke at the press briefing.
