ISLAMABAD, Oct 26: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) is considering to launch another technical survey in November to ascertain the quality of different cellular phone companies.
“If we find that the quality of a certain company is not upto the mark, we will issue a show cause notice to that company,” the PTA chairman, Maj-Gen Shahzada Alam Malik (retired), told Dawn here on Saturday.
Under section 23 of the Pakistan Telecommunication Re-organization Act 1996, the PTA has the authority to levy a fine, which may extend to Rs350 million and terminate or suspend the licenses of operators. The PTA also reserved the right to appoint an administrator to look into the affairs of a cell phone operator.
However, the chairman conceded that these penalties were imposed in extreme cases on persistent violation by the company of its terms and conditions.
“This time we were going to take drastic measures, as we have earlier asked them to improve their quality.” However, he conceded that the administrative measures were not the only solution rather it had a limited effect.
He said there were 1.6 million mobile phone users in the country out of which the major market share was with the Mobilink which had 800,400 users in the country. Similarly, Ufone company has 357,434 users, Instaphone 298,167 and Paktel has only 217,635 users, he said.
The number of Mobilink users swelled mainly because the people wanted GSM which was the latest technology and secondly the Ufone connection remained suspended for 15 months.
The PTA has earlier conducted a similar survey in July in the five major cities including Peshawar, Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi and Quetta to determine the connectivity of cell phones service and to measure the dropped calls percentage.
The decision to conduct the survey was taken after science and technology minister Prof Dr Ataur Rehman while presiding over a meeting in July last had directed the PTA to take punitive measures including cancelling of licences or imposition of fine against the mobile phone operators, if their quality of service was not in accordance with the international specification. The direction was issued when he was informed about the findings of a technical survey on different aspects of service quality offered by the four mobile phone companies.
The PTA while publishing the results of the survey had asked the companies failing to meet the required standard of services to improve their quality of service within 90 days or get ready for legal action. The 90 days period will be over on the last week of October.