ISLAMABAD, Sept 19: With the aim to achieving customer satisfaction, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Wednesday started an automated country-wide survey to check the quality of service (QoS) being provided by Cellular Mobile Operators (CMTOs) to consumers.

“Quality check is in our mandate,” said Deputy Director PTA, Khurram Ali Mehran talking to Dawn.

“We have been receiving complaints about call congestions, call dropping, and SMS problems, etc. We want to ensure that quality of services is not compromised.”

The spokesman said that PTA had sufficient experience in conducting QoS surveys, and now with latest equipment acquired, it would monitor the services of telecom operators more effectively.

He further said that these checks and surveys had resulted in quality improvement of services being provided by Cellular, Fixed and Wireless operators as well the ISPs.

PTA Zonal Offices in Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta and Rawalpindi were carrying out the survey. The survey was being conducted through QoS monitoring equipment recently acquired by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority and its officials had already been trained on this new equipment.

The survey would be completed by December 2007. After the completion of survey, results would be finalised and action would be taken against the companies not meeting the required quality standards.

Besides, checking cellular mobile service quality, PTA was also conducting a survey of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) across the country. This survey will cover both rural and urban areas.

According to Mr Mehran, PTA, the regulatory body of country’s telecom sector, regularly monitored the QoS of all telecom services by conducting comprehensive surveys throughout the year, results of which are published in the media.

Further, periodic inspections based on subscriber’s complaints were also conducted.

Last QoS Survey of Cellular Mobile Operators (CMTOs) was conducted in 2006. In September 2006, PTA conducted Wireless Local Loop (WLL) Survey to check the quality of WLL operators the result of which was published in the press and on PTA website. PTA had also carried out ISP survey in 2006.