LAHORE: Obnoxious and fraudulent calls dominate the 29,000 consumers’ complaint-chart 2013.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority received 17,948 complaints against the five cellular mobile telecom operators (CMTOs) and 11,327 against the PTCL during the last year.

Illegal practices such as obnoxious, fraudulent calls/SMS constitute 17.3 per cent of the complaints.

“Although the uptake of cellular mobile services has profound benefits for the country, the low literacy rate and some mischievous elements trouble the consumers with wrong, obnoxious and unwanted communication,” the PTA says.

Of the total complaints against the CMTOs, 43.5 per cent were related to the misuse of mobile services and 24 per cent to mobile number portability (MNP). According to the PTA’s 2013 report, the complaints against PTCL (the fixed line incumbent operator) have increased by 11 per cent as compared to the corresponding period. The PTCL shares 38 per cent of the total complaints. “With respect to 128.9 million cellular subscribers in the country, the number of complaints against the CMTOs is a small ratio compared to complaints vs subscribe-base ratio of the PTCL,” the PTA says.

Looking at the complaints received against the cellular companies the maximum number of complaints, 4,245 were against Mobilink, followed by Ufone (4,056), Telenor (3,982), Warid (2,722) and Zong (2,119).

The PTCL has virtual monopoly over fixed line sector, therefore, the nature and number of complaints against the company depicts overall state of local loop sector in the country. The PTA says it received complaints against the PTCL in various categories that included provision of service, quality of service and billing issues.

The PTA also received complaints against internet service providers (248), wireless local loop (124) and long distance international (67).

The PTA says it had resolved 98 per cent of the complaints received against the operators.

At present, Mobilink has 37.1 million subscribers, Ufone 24.5 million, Telenor 32.1 million, CM PAak (Zong) 21.1 million and Warid 12.7 million.

PTCL staff fail to address issues: PTCL subscribers of two large housing societies of the city are facing problems in broadband and landline services it is providing.

A number of complaints are being reported at (PTCL complaint cells) from the residents of Valancia HousinG Society and Wapda Town. According to the complainants, there has been a "slow response" from the PTCL staff thus causing great inconvenience to them. "My PTCL internet connection and smart TV have been out of order for over a week. Despite registration of complaint with the PTCL centre concerned the problem still exits," says a complainant of Valancia.

Another complainant, Ijaz of Wapda Town, said his landline number had been out of order for a week or so but the PTCL staff did not bother to restore it at earliest.

The residents of both societies have urged the PTCL management to pay special attention to its network there so that they could not face the problems on a regular basis.

An official at the complaint cell told Dawn that the staff responded to complaints at once and try to remove the fault.