Voice and latency: CMOs miss some key performance indicators: PTA

ISLAMABAD: The cellular mobile operators (CMOs) have missed some of the key performance indicators (KPIs) set in their licences and the applicable regulations with respect to voice and latency, an independent survey about quality of service (QoS) carried out by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has revealed.

The PTA issued necessary instructions to the operators for taking corrective measures so as to ensure improvement in the service quality up to the standards.

The authority has carried out an independent QoS survey in seventeen (17) x cities of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, and Sindh. Additionally, a joint QoS survey along with CMOs was carried out in seven (07) x cities of Gilgit-Baltistan during 3rd quarter i.e. July-Sep 2023.

During the survey, mobile network coverage along with QoS KPIs of Voice, SMS and mobile broadband were checked using state-of-the-art automated QoS Monitoring and Benchmarking Tool to ascertain conformance with Next Generation Mobile Service (NGMS) licenses and Cellular Mobile Network Quality of Service Regulations, 2021.

Based upon the compliance level of each KPI against threshold defined in the respective licenses and QoS Regulations, the CMOs have been ranked between 1st to 5th position in Mobile Network Coverage and Voice Services as per compliance level in surveyed cities. Similarly, in Mobile Broadband Speed segment, the ranking is with respect to the highest data download and upload speed, network latency and webpage loading time.

The performance of the CMOs was also benchmarked using Ookla ® Speed Test mobile application to gauge the performance of upload and download throughputs and network latency.

The survey results revealed that CMOs are compliant with respect to upload and download speed to a great extent, while improvement is observed in network latency and webpage loading time as compared to earlier surveys. Some of the voice KPIs have also been found below the licensed threshold in few areas.

As per the Next Generation Mobile Service (NGMS) licenses, licensees are required to meet the threshold of -100 dBm or above of Reference Signal Receive Power (RSRP) with 90 per cent confidence level, however, operators partially met this criteria.

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