CHAIRMAN Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Major-General (Retd) Amir Azeem Bajwa has given a commitment to resolving issues of the business community vis-à-vis cellular industry in the shortest possible time, adding that mobile service providers have already been directed to improve their services.
He also shared a piece of good news that soon 50% of handset parts would be manufactured in the country.
There is no doubt that Amir Azeem Bajwa has been working hard ever since his appointment as Chairman PTA in January 2019 to improve regulation and working of the telecom sector in the country.
Before his appointment, Bajwa worked as Director-General, Special Communication Organization (SCO) and therefore, his rich and relevant experience is a source of strength for PTA.
PTA is definitely contributing a lot to the lofty ideal of exploiting the country’s full potential in telecom but as far as the quality of service is concerned the issue remains there unattended since long.
Introduction of 3G/4G has revolutionized the sector and now all segments of the society are heavily dependent on voice and data services. This reality was also acknowledged by the Chairman himself who said that online work increased due to Covid-19 situation and a 70% increase in data usage has been witnessed.
We beg to differ when the Chairman says the issue of signal quality is confined merely to congested areas, narrow streets and basements as the issue is there even in different sectors of the Federal Capital, all private housing societies that are otherwise well planned and in neighbouring Rawalpindi.
In fact, companies are not making due investment to address the problem and consumers are made to pay and suffer for low quality services both in terms of voice and data.
PTA has regularly been conducting quality of service surveys but there is hardly any follow up, otherwise improvement would have been witnessed in the intervening period.
No doubt, installation of towers or their sharing can take time but the issue is there for a long time and why cellular companies were not made to invest in the past.
Anyhow, we hope that PTA would become proactive on the issue and ensure that all companies deliver on their commitments on the issue of quality of service.
