ISLAMABAD, July 26: The Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) plans to invest Rs19 billion for network expansion in the country, the PTCL chairman, Akhtar Ahmad Bajwa, said here on Friday.

He was speaking at the concluding session of the two-day workshop on value-added services. The chairman assured the customers that the company was all out to providing cheap, efficient and state of the art value- added services.

He said drastic steps had already been taken in this regard. The chairman said the PTCL, being the pioneer and a leader in telecom sector, had lately introduced several new and advanced services for its customers, especially for catering to the needs of the corporate sector through its recently established Value- added Services Division.

The workshop, organized by the National Postgraduate Institute of Telecom and Informatics, among other things also discussed topics such as IT and Bandwidth Services, ISDN, PRI, Col-location policy, DSL policy, Tariff, Billing and Customer Care, VMS etc.

The chairman further said an interactive approach among the PTCL staff and customers was a must to gain and maintain customers’ confidence. He said the PTCL had taken several measures relating to billing, customer care and improvement in various operational infrastructures of the company.

These measures include Computerized Fault Management System, installation of H/Qs Hotline & Helpline, enabling customers to register their complaints relating to late or non-receipt of telephone bills as well as rectification of telephone faults.

Mr Bajwa said online billing facility was available in major cities while some projects were installed in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi for payment of telephone bills. The customers will operate these machines by themselves and these machines would be installed at all major Customer Services Centres of the PTCL and at main petrol pumps, easily accessible to the customers.

The PTCL chairman said certain projects, that had been launched to facilitate customers with regard to payment of telephone bills, were in their final stage.