April 08, 2016

Quality of Mobile Services in Pakistan:

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has recently carried out a comprehensive Quality of Service (QoS) Survey of 2G and Next Generation Mobile Services (NGMS) in Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Peshawar to check voice and NGMS QoS as per the required standards. QoS Survey is in progress in other cities of Pakistan.

During the survey, NGMS services of Mobilink, Telenor Ufone and Zong were tested whereas voice and SMS services of all the mobile operators were checked. Results of the testing revealed that the data throughput of Zong 4G is the highest among all NGMS licensees.

Voice Services of all mobile operators were tested to check availability of services, Congestion, Drop Call Rate, Call Connection Time and Voice Quality. Results of the survey revealed that service availability and voice quality for all the mobile operators is as per the required standards.

Short Message Service (SMS) of mobile operators was tested for SMS successful delivery and that the SMS is received within a specified time. All mobile operators are delivering SMS earlier than the standard delivery time.

In Next Generation Mobile Services (NGMS) Auction held on 23rd April, 2014, Mobilink and Zong acquired 10MHz frequency spectrum for 3G services whereas Ufone and Telenor acquired 5MHz. The results of the recent survey reveals that Internet data speed of NGMS/3G operators with 10MHz frequency spectrum is higher than that of the Internet data speed provided by 3G operators with 5MHz frequency spectrum. Zong has acquired 10MHz frequency spectrum for 4G services in the auction. Internet data speed of Zong 4G is highest among all NGMS operators.

Detailed results can be viewed at www.pta.gov.pk.

 

(Khurram A. Mehran)

Director (PR)