Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has imposed Rs 5 million penalty on M/s Callmate Telecom Company for overcharging long distance and international calls, giving 30-day time to pay the fine.
The PTA is said to have carried out a tariff verification exercise by making national and international long distance calls to a variety of destinations wherein it was observed that Callmate has been overcharging to its customers on its pay cards. The company is directed to submit the penalty money within 30-day.
A PTA determination placed on its website said the company has been charging different totally to what it submitted to the Authority. An exercise of tariff analysis conducted by Quetta office said that an overcharging of Rs 24.11 was found on a three minutes mobile call to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as Callmate charges Rs 78.11 on a call rather than Rs 54 it submitted to the regulator.
On local mobile, the company has been charging Rs 5.26 extra from the tariff it submitted to the authority. The company was found charging Rs 27.50 on a 3.10 minute call instead of Rs 22.24.
On Nation-wide Dialing (NWD) mobile call, the Callmate overcharges Rs 4.74 as a call of four minutes made by the verification team through a Callmate card discovered the company deducts Rs 36.30 rather than stipulated Rs 31.56.
Similarly, the overcharging was found on NWD fixed lines. The PTA said that a national long distance call was made for three minutes and Rs 8.92 was deducted from the calling card. The Callmate was required to deduct Rs 6 for three minutes as per their tariff submitted to the authority.
Another exercise conducted by the Lahore office also detected similar anomalies of overcharging by the company. When a local call of 1.35 minutes duration was made from Callmate calling card, the company, as tariff displayed on its website and submitted to the PTA, was required to deduct Rs 8 for two minutes rather charged Rs 18.
For NWD mobile call, the company has been overcharging Rs 2.94 per minute. It charged Rs 8.82 for a minute call rather than Rs 5.88. On a local mobile call, the company has been overcharging Rs 6 on 2.49 minutes call and Rs 4.66 on NWD fixed line call while on NWD mobile it charging Rs 13.70 extra.
Moreover, an international call made by the team to Afghanistan by using a Callmate calling card found an overcharging of Rs 14, as the company charged Rs 26 for one minute call instead of Rs 12 it displayed on website and submitted to the authority.
The Callmate submitted its responses when served show cause notices and held hearing, giving different justifications and reasons for overcharging. But the PTA said that through their findings on the submissions made by the company, it has become clear that Callmate has been overcharging from its customers.
The PTA said that the statutory provisions and clauses of the terms and conditions of the license have been violated by the Callmate through overcharging its customers, justifying the Authority to initiate action against it under Section 23 of the Act.