ISLAMABAD: Cellular Mobile Operators (CMOs) in the country are providing voice and SMS services below the minimum required licensed standards, a survey conducted by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) revealed.

Sharing details of the Independent Cellular Quality of Service (QoS) Survey for the fourth quarter of 2020 on Wednesday, the authority said that based on the findings, CMOs have been directed to rectify ‘identified anomalies’. The companies have been asked to take corrective measures for improvement of voice, SMS and data services up to the licensed standards within 30 days.

However, data services of all CMOs were at the satisfactory level and up to the mark.

To measure the performance and service quality of 2G, 3G and 4G of the mobile operators, PTA carried out the survey using the newly procured automated QoS ‘Smart-Benchmarker’ tool. The survey was conducted in Kabirwala, Hyderabad, Islama­bad, Karachi, Lahore, Quetta and Peshawar.

The drive test teams selected survey routes to cover main roads, service roads and majority of sectors and colonies.

The performance of voice services of CMOs was checked by measuring Grade of Service, Service Accessibility, Call Connection Time (CCT), Call Completion Ratio and End-to-End Speech Quality.

The survey highlighted that none of the mobile companies have achieved CCT of less than 6.5 seconds in all the surveyed cities. CCT is the time between sending of complete call initiation information by the caller and in return receipt of call setup notification, which is the time between dialing a number and hearing ring-back tone.

At the same time none of the companies met the speech quality standards as clarity of voice was not up to the mark.

Published in Dawn, December 31st, 2020