THE quality of mobile phone signals and Internet connectivity has dropped to a dangerous level but the regulator — Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) – has confined itself to mere publication of reports on quality of service as the exercise has little or no impact on the ground situation. It was in this backdrop that the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunication has raised serious concerns over deterioration of the quality of cellular signals even in Islamabad and poor data services being offered by different companies.
There is no doubt that the ongoing financial crunch and the steps taken by the government to address the challenge also created difficulties for the telecom sector but the quality issue reflects lack of interest on the part of the relevant companies to provide services to customers that match the charges for them. There are reasons to believe that the nuisance of the call drop, which is a country-wide phenomenon, has much to do with the greed of the companies to mint money on account of call set up charges. All companies have significantly increased their voice and data charges in recent weeks/months but still they are not fulfilling their professional responsibility to ensure provision of uninterrupted services in case of power failures. Most of the time, cellular companies do not activate the standby system (generators) during load-shedding on the pretext of financial constraints, leaving their customers at the mercy of circumstances. The world is moving into the 5G era but we are unable to offer even satisfactory 3G/4G services and simple voice services as there is least investment on improvement and upgradation of the system. How can we compete with the rest of the world and how are we going to achieve export targets for the IT and telecom sector?
