August 16, 2007	Thursday	Sha’aban 2, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Aug 15: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Wednesday directed mobile phone operators to speed up the process of streamlining the mobile phone users’ data and take strong measures against the franchises and sub-agents violating these instructions.

According to a statement issued here, the PTA had called a meeting of representatives of all mobile phone companies on Wednesday to review progress on mobile phone customers’ antecedents’ verification.

The meeting was chaired by Chairman PTA, Maj-Gen (retired) Shahzada Alam Malik and attended by CEOs and senior management of all mobile phone companies.

The PTA chairman stressed following PTA’s standard operating procedure (SOP) on the subject matter in letter and spirit.

He directed the companies to take strict actions to ensure that sub-franchises of the companies also followed the procedure laid down by the PTA. He also warned that franchises be cancelled if they were not following the SOPs.

During the meeting, CEOs and other senior company officials briefed the Authority on measures already taken by them.

They assured that franchises were being checked to ensure PTA’s directions, regarding sale of connections on unverifiable antecedents.

All possible steps were being taken for authentication such as sending SMSs to their customers to get their connections transferred in their names if they had not done so already.