Here are the results from our most recent poll on billing errors. This matches the results from PTA survey and shows that billing errors are common and a source of problem for consumers. After service quality issues, this is probably the worst that a consumer faces.
PTA yesterday released the subscriber numbers for January 2010. The year begins with a drop in overall subscriber base to 95.4 Million as compared to 97.6 Million at December end dropping the mobile density to 58.20%.
The operator suffering the most loss was Warid, losings 2.6 Million subscriber and making its market share 16.97% which was 19.4% in December 2009. Tough time for the new CEO.
All other operators showed some growth with Mobilink still leading the market and Telenor following it. As a result of drops in Warid, Ufone now ranks at third position.
With Telenor bringing innovations to the mobile banking and Mobilink also planning to penetrate with the same soon, the competition will definitely elevate as the year unfolds.
PTA has proposed changes to Consumer Protection Regulations2009 to include service withdrawal. See the announcement and draft document on PTA website. This is exactly what we have written about before. Kudos to PTA for taking this step.
Guess what is the background of the event shown below? Other than prayes, are we doing the right things to make Pakistan an “Information Based Society”? Talking about local content is fine but I have been hearing about that for many years. What about local peering and IX?
The news release which accompanied this picture tells us that PTA will hold an exclusive conference on ‘Promoting ICT Sector’ on February 25, 2010. This conference is being organized in view of the importance of local content and applications for future promotion of ICT industry and infrastructure.
I hope there is some action from this other than plain talk.
PTA has proposed to update the approach towards setting the annual spectrum fee for radio based services. This is the first major changes since 2000 when spectrum was abundant. PTA quoted “a drastic change in spectrum demand in Pakistan which needs associated price change”. PTA has issued a consultative paper on this topic which provides the initial thinking behind the pricing changes and seeks input from industry stakeholders. The paper indicates that from now on, a periodic review of spectrum prices would be carried out to introduce utilization efficiency, bring technological innovation and tackle any distortions observed after implementation of proposed charges.
About two weeks ago we asked our readers about their opinion on the “limited time offers” by telecom companies. You can view that post here. An overwhelming majority of 92% responded with dissatisfaction over how companies handle these offers. I think this presents a good opportunity for these companies to improve how these offers are marketed and communicated.
There is a lot of talk about the news that Punjab Government has unanimously passed a resolution banning late night offers/packages by mobile phone operators. Daily times reports it as follows:
Members of the Punjab Assembly (MPAs) on Tuesday unanimously passed a resolution banning late night packages offered by mobile networks at cheap rates in keeping with “moral and social values” and to “maintain the youth’s health and prevent vice”.
PTA has just released 2009 December mobile subscriber stats. Though it would have been nice if the industry could hit 100 million mark in calendar year 2009, we are content about the overall progress (7.6 million net additions) of the telecom segment. Mobilink had a good last quarter, ending with 30.8 million susbcribers and retained its market share of 32% from the beginning of the year. Telenor is firm at second spot. Ufone also showed good progress (18.5 M) towards the end of year but overall it fell behind Warid (18.8 M) which became the number 3 in terms of total subscribers.
Telecard has been in licensing disputes earlier and is now again as PTA suspends the WiMax commencement certificate of Telecard Limited. This takes Qubee’s future at stake as Qubee (brand name of Augere) for operating WiMax services uses Telecard’s spectrum and licenses. Daily times reports the details.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Monday suspended the commencement certificate of Telecard Limited.
The PTA took interim action in respect of their WLL licences, which were being used in conjunction with the 3.5GHz wireless spectrum by Augere Pakistan for supporting their new wireless broadband service launched in Karachi by the name of Qubee.
PTA recently published results from their Quality of Service tests. If you look at the results for speech quality of mobile service providers , it shows that Dadyal in Azad Kashmir has the best!! Congratulations to Dadyalians.
As we figure out explanations to which city has the best service (and there could be many ways this could be decided) there are other questions that one wonders about. According to these results performance of all operator is below the benchmark set by PTA. Was the bar too high or do we have really bad speech quality??
Every other day we hear about special offers from cellular operators introducing new packages and rates. Majority of these are limited time offers. It is very hard to find out if a packages announced are still effective or not. We have had instances earlier that the offers are taken back without proper and clear notification to the consumers and they have been hit with higher charges because of this.
Such actions are violations of the consumer rights. I suggest that the authority must enforce on operators to clearly announce end-time of all limited-time offers with the announcement of any such offer. We are here posting a poll on the same, cast your opinion and give your comments on this.
The 668 Sim Information campaign is playing a vital role in withdrawal of unauthorized registered SIMs. PTA have taken it a step forward, now it is also available on mobile via SMS. Users who wish to check on the SIMs registered against their CNIC can now send their CNIC number (without dash/space) t0 668 and get a prompt reply with details of name of service provider and number of SIMs.
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