ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Friday directed the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, the PTCL and the National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC) to submit written replies in two weeks to questions raised in a petition challenging the restriction on the number of mobile phone SIMs used by any citizen to five.

The orders were passed by Justice Athar Minallah on a petition filed by Tariq Bilal Advocate, the president of the Cyber Law Society of Pakistan. The petition also criticised the abrupt change of phone numbers and shutting down of wireless local loop numbers in use by the citizens across the country.

The petition contended that changing a telephone number amounted to taking away the livelihood, profession and life of an individual protected under the constitution.

The PTA has issued directions to mobile operators to restrict the number of connections to each subscriber to a maximum of five. The direction has been made applicable with retrospective effect, affecting even those using SIMs for around a decade. As a result, a number of active connections have been closed.

The petition referred to the recently-introduced biometric verification system for mobile phone users and questioned the justification for limiting the number of any communication connections, including mobile phones, when proper identification procedures had been put in place.

About the abrupt change of fixed line phone numbers, the petitioner argued that it disconnected the citizens from the rest of the world. When someone tries to call his doctor, ambulance, mechanic or anyone else, it comes to light that the desired number is no longer working.

Besides the loss of connectivity and business for the subscribers, the move serves to be a revenue generation activity for the companies. The petition said the PTCL some time ago had introduced a free voice mail service which was in fact a means to use its dominant position to earn millions. The facility charged all incoming calls to land lines even if no one answered the same and forwarded it to a voice mail system.

It said the company had arbitrarily and without prior notice activated packages on numbers across Pakistan whereby customers were forced to pay from Rs500 to Rs800 per month additionally for a package they never required or asked for. This charge is disguised as “for all new customers” but, in fact, all the subscribers whose numbers are being changed are automatically put to this which is a case of double jeopardy. On one hand the subscriber is deprived of his phone number and on the other they are forced to pay the extra charge which is supposedly for the new customers.

The petitioner asked the Competition Commission of Pakistan to take action against the company for abusing its dominant position, saying Section 3 of the Competition Act 2010 provided for such an action.

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2015

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