Telecom package prices could face closer regulatory scrutiny if the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) gets the power it has proposed to regularly review and redefine relevant telecom markets. PTA has suggested the change as part of the draft Telecommunication Competition Rules, 2026, prepared by the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication (MoITT), proposing a provision that would allow relevant telecom markets to be reviewed periodically for regulatory oversight. Under the proposed mechanism, the authority could redefine a telecom market when changes in market conditions or industry trends make it necessary, allowing PTA to reassess how companies compete and how services are categorized as the telecom sector evolves.
The draft rules define a relevant telecom market as a product, service, or geographic market identified by PTA for assessing competition. While determining these markets, PTA may consider several factors, including consumer demand, availability of alternative services, supply-side substitution, pricing behaviour, and technological developments, along with the geographic scope of competition, barriers to entry and expansion, network effects, and access conditions. This means changes in telecom pricing patterns could become one of the factors PTA weighs when reviewing the competitive conditions of a particular market, giving the regulator a broader evidentiary basis than the market-share threshold it has historically relied on alone.
The periodic review proposal sits alongside a related amendment PTA has pushed for determining Significant Market Power (SMP), under which the authority would presume a telecom licensee holds SMP if its market share exceeds 25 percent, while still basing its final determination on an overall assessment of market conditions and competitive dynamics rather than the threshold alone. PTA would evaluate market share based on sectoral revenues and overall market concentration, while also weighing countervailing buyer power, network effects, possible collusion, demand elasticity, excess profitability, and non-price competition levels. Once PTA determines an operator holds SMP, that company would face a wider range of obligations specifically targeting tariffs and pricing charges, alongside infrastructure access, accounting separation, and detailed cost accounting requirements. PTA has separately proposed removing the existing one-year limit on reconsidering telecom merger and transaction approvals, replacing it with wording that would let the authority revisit decisions “as and when required.”
These proposed amendments form PTA’s comments on a draft that has been caught in a jurisdictional tug-of-war for nearly a decade, with MoITT and the Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) disputing which body holds legal authority to frame telecom-specific competition rules. PTA first submitted draft rules to the ministry back in 2016 following the Telecom Policy 2015, with MoITT circulating a revised draft in January 2026, PTA submitting comments in March, and the ministry sharing yet another version on July 7, 2026. The Senate Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunication has separately pressed for the rules’ finalisation as part of its broader agenda covering Ufone’s rebranding and Etisalat’s dues, underscoring how the absence of sector-specific competition rules has left regulatory uncertainty hanging over a market currently undergoing its most significant consolidation in years. Until the MoITT-CCP jurisdictional dispute is resolved, the periodic market-review power PTA is now seeking, along with the broader Telecommunication Competition Rules it would sit within, remains pending finalisation.
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