ISLAMABAD: Comple-ting one year since March 2020, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has been continuously supplementing the government’s efforts to contain Covid-19 through various means from sending cautionary SMSs to setting up awareness ringtones, said a press release.

Two billion coronavirus awareness messages have so far been sent since 19th March 2020 in Urdu, English and regional languages to mobile users across Pakistan.

Awareness SMSs have also been sent to suspected persons who may have come into contact with coronavirus patients during travelling.

More than 1.036 million cautionary messages have been sent to travelers and suspected persons.

Furthermore, Corona Awareness Ring Back Tones (RBTs) have been activated on 131.7 million subscribers’ mobile devices.

The PTA also successfully mobilised the telecom sector to carry out activities required to maintain performance and services.

To ensure that Pakistan stays connected, the PTA immediately analysed international and national bandwidth peak trends and capacity, and engaged all operators for capacity upgrades, load balancing and traffic optimisation.

The telecom operators, especially Cellular Mobile Operators (CMOs) played a commendable role for their outright support in handling this global emergency of unprecedented scale.

Operators increased data allowances and offered discounted bundles and packages (additional data and on-net voice minutes) to facilitate users. Efforts were undertaken to quickly expand the network to areas devoid of broadband coverage (fixed line and mobile).—PR

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021