ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has rejected the cellular mobile operators’ demand of a moratorium on quality of services (QoS), saying it will degrade network, quality of services and user experience, official sources revealed to Business Recorder.
The PTA stated that in the context of challenges faced by the operators in relation to non-availability of the equipment is refuge instead of network optimization, provision of fuel at sites for power backups etc in order to improve KPIs.
The CMOs had demanded a moratorium on quality-of-service, roll-out obligations, a moratorium on Universal Service Fund (USF) and an R&D fund reduction from two percent to one per cent for one-year duration and floor price uplift mechanism of voice and data to optimize base price.
PTA conducts QoS survey in 18 cities: CMOs missed most of KPIs set in licences, regulations
The Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication asked the PTA to provide a response on the issues and furnish legal procedures as per rules.
Sources revealed that the Authority responded that one of its primary functions as per Section 4(d) of the Pakistan Telecommunication Re-organization Act, 1996, is to promote the availability of a wide range of high-quality, efficient, cost-effective and competitive telecommunication services throughout Pakistan. Consequently, NGMS licenses and Cellular Mobile Network Quality of Service (QoS) Regulations 2021, contain the minimum target of QoS Standards pertaining to Voice and Moble Broadband for compliance at all times by mobile operators.
The Authority responded that it has already provided facilitation/relaxation in connection with some of the QoS parameters which include, (i) Call Setup Time has been relaxed from 6.5 seconds to 7.5 seconds to address the additional setup time required in Circuit Switched Fall Back (CSFB) scenario, (ii) The minimum target of User Data Throughput are being improved from 2Mbps to 4Mbps for 40 and 256Kbps to 1Mbps for 30 in a phased manner-(a) Within a period of two years in Pakistan, (b) Within a period of three years for 3G and four years for 4G in AJK and GB, (iii) 3G Mobile Broadband is not tested where 4G Mobile Broadband is being provided, (iv) The testing mode of end-to-end speech quality/mean opinion score has been limited to narrowband only, in AJK 8 GB for a period of two years, ie, up to March 31, 2024.
The PTA conducts regular survey to ensure Quality of Service being maintained by all the CMOs. Cellular operators are generally fulfilling QoS standards in relation to NGMS services whereas voice KPIs have serious issues. Recent licenses issued to CMOs have obligation to provide 4 Mbps average throughput for data services which is required to be completed by March 2024.
Generally, all operators are fulfilling the same, however, voice KPIs which were not a new introduction and are being followed in all previous licenses as well are not being met. Thus in the context of challenges faced by the operators in relation to non-availability of the equipment is refuge instead of network optimization, provision of fuel at sites for power backups etc in order to improve KPIs. Moratorium on QoS is not supported as it will degrade network QoS and user experience, the PTA responded.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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