PTA has completed a detailed survey of customer service performance across all cellular mobile operators in Pakistan, and the results make for uncomfortable reading across the entire industry. Every major operator, including Jazz, Telenor Pakistan, Ufone, Zong, and the Special Communications Organisation, failed to meet the required call centre access time limits set under the Telecom Consumer Protection Regulations 2009, meaning customers across all five networks experienced longer waiting times than the regulatory framework permits. The survey covered a broad range of user experience indicators including helpline access, operator response time, complaint handling speed, issue resolution success rates, and access to emergency services, providing a comprehensive picture of where Pakistan’s telecom sector continues to fall short of its own regulatory obligations.
Beyond the universal failure on call centre response times, the assessment identified additional specific concerns that go beyond general service quality into public safety territory. Emergency helpline routing in Gilgit-Baltistan was found to be misconfigured, with calls to the Child Protection Helpline 1121 being misrouted rather than reaching the intended service. Several other essential national helplines were also found to not be properly mapped across networks, including the Edhi Foundation at 115, Pakistan Railways at 117, the National Disaster Management Authority at 911, and Chhipa Welfare Association at 1020. These are not minor administrative oversights; they represent gaps in the emergency response infrastructure that Pakistani citizens rely on during crises, and their absence from properly functioning network mappings directly undermines public safety. The Special Communications Organisation additionally failed to submit complete data on billing accuracy and related consumer complaints, leaving a gap in the regulator’s ability to conduct a full evaluation of that operator’s customer service performance across all assessed dimensions.
PTA emphasised the need for immediate corrective action across all operators, making clear that the findings were not being treated as routine observations but as compliance failures requiring a structured and timely response. The survey’s conclusions arrive at a particularly pointed moment for Pakistan’s telecom sector, coming just weeks after PTA disclosed that it had recovered only Rs. 13.6 million of the Rs. 68.9 million in penalties it had imposed on operators over five years for quality of service violations, a figure that raises questions about the deterrent value of the current regulatory enforcement framework. With fifth-generation services now in limited commercial deployment across major cities, the gap between the network technology capabilities operators are marketing and the basic customer service standards they are failing to meet represents one of the more consequential contradictions facing Pakistan’s telecommunications regulator as it works to build consumer confidence in the country’s next phase of digital connectivity.
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