Highest tele-density? Good enough! What about QoS?
It was revealed by Pakistan’s Prime Minister - Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani - yesterday that teledensity in the country had increased to 58 percent of the population, which was the highest in South Asia. This sounds really good, but does it also mean we have highest QoS in the region? Not really!
No doubt, Pakistan remained one of the fastest growing telecom markets in the world where in the last year mobile industry invested close to $3 billion of total Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) coming into the country. But the Quality of Service (QoS) monitoring and enforcement needs a lot to be done.
Pakistan’s Telecom Authority (PTA) had to face severe criticism in recent past over unidentified SIM cards which are avilable throughout the country. As these SIMS can be used for any kind of illegal activity, analysts believe it is the fault of PTA as it could have imparted a strict policy since it issued cellular licenses.
June 4th, 2008 at 6:02 am
Yes, quality of service is very low especially in rural areas. Last month, I was in a rural area of Jhang (Punjab) and many of my calls got disconnected just because of low QoS. Now where should I go to claim my losses?
June 11th, 2008 at 9:02 am
I would like to even question the highest tele-density claim. As cost of a new mobile connection is 100Rs on average, there are many people holding multiple SIMs. I think the real tele-density is atleast 15% less than these claims.
PTA holds the credit of so many SIM cards roaming on streets, makets and shops etc. There should have been a check and balance and strict documentation should have been implemented in order to ensure proper usage of these mobile connections.
As far as Quality of Service (QoS) is concerned, it is being improved day by day. I am a Telenor subscriber and very happy with their service. As I don’t live in a rural area, so I don’t know about their QoS there. Broadband QoS is not so good and there are downtimes which teases me a lot.