ISLAMABAD: Amid deteriorating telecom services in the country, cellular mobile operators (CMOs) partially met key performance indicators (KPIs), set in their licences and the applicable regulations with respect to voice services, webpage loading and latency, an independent survey about quality of service carried out by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) revealed.
Official sources revealed that since the start of these surveys, CMOs have yet to meet all KPIs. The PTA was earlier issuing showcase notices and later imposing penalties; however, since August 2023, the authority has not imposed penalties despite poor quality of services as evident from PTA’s own surveys.
Asking about the reason for not taking any action, top PTA official confirmed that they do not want to frighten telecom operators any more.
The PTA has carried out a Quality of Services (QoS) survey in 18 cities of Pakistan during third Quarter 2024.
During the survey, the performance of CMOs has been assessed in accordance with the Cellular Mobile Network QoS Regulations, 2021.
The survey comprised 0.29 million tests to measure Mobile Broadband Performance while 41,700 samples of voice and SMS were tested. Summary of the drive and overall results are as below: 2400 KMs travelled, 63 days survey, 18 cities tested.
During the survey, QoS tests were conducted in the areas of Voice, Mobile Broadband (Throughput, Latency and Web Browsing) and Short Messaging Service (SMS).
Latency, while not a traditional KPI (non-service KPI), is a vital metric for Mobile Broadband Performance, as it directly affects user experience.
During the survey, Network Latency was measured by calculating the ping between different websites and 3rd Party Test servers. However, all of the four operators partially or in most cases missed the KPI and were found non-compliant in most of the cases.
Web Page Loading Time is an important Quality of Experience (QoE) metric, which, although not a traditional service KPI (non-service), provides valuable insights into the performance of CMOs in delivering seamless web browsing experiences. Web Page Loading Time of different national and international websites were tested, where not a single operator was found compliant in all of the surveyed areas. The operators met the KPI partially.
A total of 21,061 call attempts were made and out of which 570 were failed attempts. In 20,491 successful call attempts, 208 calls dropped prior to completion of two minutes duration, whereas, 20,283 calls remained connected for the complete duration of two minutes. The 5x QoS KPIs (i.e. Network Accessibility, Call Setup Success Rate, Call Setup Time, Call Completion Rate and Mean Opinion Score) have been measured while testing voice services in the surveyed cities.
A total of 20,433 SMS sending attempts were conducted, out of which 20,372 SMS were successfully transmitted by A-Party while 20,203 SMS were successfully received at B-Party. The 2 x SMS QoS KPIs (i.e. Success Rate and Delivery Time) have been measured while testing SMS services in the surveyed cities.
The categorisation of CMOs in Mobile Network Coverage i.e. Signal Strength of 4G/LTE and 3G Networks (in case of fallback) measured in Technology Auto Detect Mode: CMOs Standing in Mobile Network Coverage – Technology Auto Detect is as; Zong stands 1st, Jazz 2nd, Ufone 3rd and Telenor 4th.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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