Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Shaza Fatima Khawaja has informed the National Assembly through a written reply that all four major cellular mobile operators in Pakistan are running below PTA’s required 99 percent network availability threshold, with prolonged commercial electricity failures identified as the primary driver of the shortfall across a nationwide network of 57,044 base transceiver stations.
Operations Support System parameters showed average network availability at 98.1 percent for Telenor, 98.07 percent for Jazz, 97.6 percent for Ufone, and 96.86 percent for Zong, with all four operators falling short of the regulatory benchmark. Jazz operates the largest network footprint with 16,247 base transceiver station sites, including 16,003 fourth generation towers, having completely phased out its third generation infrastructure. CMPak follows with 15,882 total sites comprising third and fourth generation towers across its footprint. Telenor Pakistan maintains 13,034 sites with 12,655 fourth generation towers, while Ufone operates 11,881 sites with 10,705 fourth generation installations. Despite the availability shortfall, call completion rates across all operators remained above 98 percent, and mobile broadband throughput exceeded the 4 Mbps benchmark, with Telenor recording the highest average speed at 11.64 Mbps.
The minister outlined a range of structural and operational challenges explaining the availability gap. Unreliable commercial power supply remains the most critical issue, exhausting backup systems during prolonged outages and directly impacting site uptime. During winter months, operators also face reduced output from solar-powered systems due to limited sunlight hours, while remote and mountainous regions present additional complications through harsh weather, difficult terrain, and restricted access for maintenance teams. Frequent optical fibre cable cuts and disruptions in fibre-to-site connectivity continue to affect network backhaul and interrupt both voice and data services, while increasing incidents of theft and vandalism targeting batteries, fuel supplies, fibre cables, and telecom equipment have added further pressure on operators already dealing with energy and terrain-related challenges. The absence of a streamlined one-window facilitation mechanism for right-of-way permissions has also delayed network deployment and expansion projects across different parts of the country.
To address the performance gaps, the government outlined several measures being implemented through PTA. These include planned expansion of 480 MHz of additional spectrum to improve fourth generation speeds to up to 20 Mbps and support future fifth generation services capable of delivering speeds up to 50 Mbps, alongside a directive requiring operators to deploy 1,000 additional sites annually with 20 percent reserved for underserved areas through the Universal Service Fund. Further measures include transitioning networks from second generation to fourth generation, gradually phasing out third generation technology, increasing the national fibre backhaul ratio from 20 percent to 35 percent, and promoting infrastructure sharing and national roaming frameworks to reduce operational costs. PTA conducted 379 quality of service surveys over the past three years, issuing five show-cause notices and 15 warning letters to operators over service quality concerns, and has imposed financial penalties totalling Rs68.9 million on non-compliant operators over the past five years.
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