On Friday, 27th November 2015, 2nd Consumers IT Telecom Conference was held in Pearl Continental Hotel Karachi, hosted by Consumers Association of Pakistan (CAP) where many top ranking officials from the telecom industry came to sit together and discuss the persisting issues being faced by the consumers. Chairman PTA Mr. Syed Ismail Shah was also one of the speakers of the day. While different speakers discussed different woes pertaining to consumers and proposed solutions to which Mr. Ismail responded positively and promised to bring improvements into the regulatory authority to enable better performance and accountability of the telecom industry. He also mentioned the milestones that the telecom industry has achieved in the previous years up till now.
As broadband users ourselves, we are aware of the issues consumers have to deal with. The major ones being not getting the promised speeds for your broadband connection and areas with spotty coverage. PTA seems to be aware of such issues and is planning to launch its own speed testing application for Android platform while an iOS version might be coming out in the near future.
The reason PTA has decided to implement a speed testing solution of its own is because there is no standards of Quality of service when it comes to broadband internet in Pakistan. Hence there is a strong need to regulate and monitor Broadband companies and their performance as some users get highly variable speeds in different parts of the city. Broadband providers have their own servers on Speedtest.net, however they don’t share the statistics and analytics that they get when users check their broadband speeds. This initiative will help to make sure that the provider is delivering on its promise and consumers are satisfied in all areas with respect to all variables in play, PTA has decided to crowdsource speed testing data by launching its own app which will collect internet metrics from users and report geolocation as well. Thus any coverage or speed issues in a certain area can be pointed out as well as the promised speeds by the broadband provider can be audited by an independent authority to make sure that everything is in check. In the future if PTA makes this data public then users can get to know that which areas get better reception and thus make a smart decision about which provider to choose. Hopefully this new implementation will work in the consumer’s favour and people will enjoy better quality broadband services in Pakistan.
This app is currently in its pilot program with a limited number of users and would be launched properly after the required results start to come out. Are you happy with your internet provider? Do you think this new app will regulate service quality in a much better way? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
when will they fine ptcl ?? their bb service never works and they continue to rob consumers.