ISLAMABAD — For millions of Pakistanis, a simple phone call becomes repeated battle with dropped connections, weak signals and slow internet, and now Parliament stepped in, summoning Jazz, Zong and Ufone to explain why the country’s telecom troubles continue despite years of warnings and millions in fines.
The move came as lawmakers expressed growing frustration over the quality of mobile services being experienced by consumers across the country. During committee meeting chaired by Syed Amin-ul-Haq on September 10, lawmakers questioned the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) over what they viewed as inadequate improvement despite repeated regulatory action against telecom operators.
NA Committee chairman highlighted problem familiar to millions of mobile users having to dial the same number repeatedly before a call finally connects. The committee asked what action PTA had taken against telecom companies over poor service quality during the previous six months.
PTA officials acknowledged that mobile and internet service quality remains a serious problem in different parts of Pakistan. The regulator told lawmakers that four show-cause notices had been issued to telecom operators during the last six months. The longer enforcement record was even more striking. PTA has issued 48 show-cause notices and 22 warning letters to telecom companies over the past several years, while penalties totaling Rs68.9 million have been imposed for quality-of-service violations.
The regulator also has the power to impose a fine of up to Rs350 million on a telecom operator, depending on the violation. Yet lawmakers questioned whether notices and penalties are actually translating into better service for ordinary consumers.
With complaints continuing, the committee decided to summon representatives of Jazz, Zong and Ufone at its next meeting. The operators will be asked to explain why consumers continue to face network failures and what concrete measures they are taking to improve mobile coverage, call quality, internet performance and network infrastructure.
The committee also directed the Ministry of IT and Telecommunication and PTA to take a more effective role in resolving the country’s connectivity problems.
The latest confrontation is not an isolated incident. In July, the same National Assembly committee had expressed serious concern over poor internet services, noting that connectivity problems were affecting not only remote areas but also major cities such as Karachi. Users were reporting slow internet speeds and repeated failures when trying to connect calls.
The committee’s latest proceedings show that the frustration has now shifted from complaints to direct accountability of telecom operators.
The telecom crisis is also tied to infrastructure and electricity problems. Parliament previously been told that prolonged load-shedding can shut down telecom towers, directly disrupting mobile and internet services. In July, PTA officials said some areas were experiencing up to 10 hours of daily load-shedding, affecting the performance of telecom infrastructure.
Millions of Pakistanis are living with a daily nightmare on their phones, calls cutting mid-conversation, signals vanishing without warning, and entire networks collapsing under the weight of power failures and weak infrastructure. Official data paints a damning picture of a telecom sector struggling to deliver even the most basic service.
According to the latest ITU figures, Pakistan’s official dropped-call ratio stood at a seemingly low 0.16% in 2025. But dig deeper and the cracks become impossible to ignore. PTA regulations demand that call drop rates stay below 2% and call completion rates exceed 98%. While many independent PTA drive tests show operators scraping into the 99%+ completion zone in some areas, performance remains wildly uneven. In congested cities, on highways, inside buildings, and especially in hilly tourist spots like Murree, calls routinely die mid-sentence.
Worse still, nearly 9,000 mobile towersm, roughly 16 to 17% of the entire national network of 57,000–58,000 sites, are plagued by availability problems. Network uptime is frequently stuck between 96% and 98%, well below the PTA’s mandatory 99% benchmark. Power outages, load-shedding, diesel theft, vandalism, and right-of-way delays are crippling the system. KP, Balochistan, and Gilgit-Baltistan are hit hardest.
Coverage in hill stations and key intercity routes has become a national embarrassment. All major operators — Jazz, Zong, Telenor and Ufone — have failed minimum 4G confidence thresholds on critical stretches including the Murree Expressway and Abbottabad–Khanpur road.
Voice quality is equally patchy. PTA surveys across 2025 and into 2026 reveal mixed compliance on call setup success, connection times, voice clarity, SMS delivery, and latency. Networks using advanced VoLTE technology perform better, but consistency remains elusive. Jazz and Zong often top the rankings for coverage and speeds, while Telenor and Ufone lag in several categories.
PTA’s complaint system is flooded with thousands of grievances every few months, more than 8,000 in just one six-month stretch. Call drops, weak signals, dead zones, slow data, and billing disputes dominate the list. Jazz, with the largest subscriber base, consistently attracts the highest number of complaints. And it doesn’t stop at voice calls. 2025 went down as one of the worst years for internet connectivity in recent memory, with around 68 major outages clocking up nearly 900 hours, almost 38 full days of disruption. Submarine cable faults, regulatory interventions, and backbone failures left users stranded.
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