KARACHI, Feb 1: In a long-awaited move, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has decided to take action against Mobilink in view of increasing public complaints against the cell phone company.

Well-placed sources in the PTA told Dawn on Tuesday that the telecoms regulator would ask Mobilink why it had failed to upgrade its services which inconvenienced subscribers greatly.

Mobilink is the largest cell phone company in Pakistan with over five million subscribers. "The telecoms regulator has received complaints about poor call connection, high drop rate and bad connectivity.

Since the number of complaints has risen considerably, some punitive action will now be taken against them," they said. Defending the performance of his company, a high-ranking official of Mobilink said subscribers were inconvenienced because of shifting of the frequency band from 900MHz to 1,800Mhz as required under the new telecommunications policy.

"We have informed our subscribers many times that the shifting of the frequency band from 900MHz to 1,800MHz would take some time. It must be borne in mind that the shifting process required dismantling of existing cell phone sites or towers and their replacement.

We were asked to complete the process in four months," he said. The Mobilink official was reluctant to say exactly when the upgrade process would be completed.

He said: "The hardware has been dismantled and replaced and currently post-implementation optimization work is being done. This will be completed at the earliest," he said.

When asked, the Mobilink official said that the shifting of the frequency band from 900MHz to 1,800MHz would not require changing of cell phone appliances by subscribers.

Meanwhile, a large number of Mobilink subscribers called in to say that they were most upset about the poor quality of service offered by the cell phone company. "Mobilink earned the title of 'Maybe-link' because of its poor service long time ago.

Instead of improving, its services have steadily deteriorated. I will switch over to first new cell phone company which enters the market," a caller said. Another caller said that sometimes signals indicating Mobilink connectivity disappeared all of a sudden.

"In a city like Karachi where Mobilink has so many towers, this should never happen. One fails to understand why Mobilink cannot ensure connectivity at all times," he said.