ISLAMABAD – Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has received over 40,502 complaints during one year (July 2017 to June 2018) and redressed 99.64 per cent of them in cooperation with respective operators.
Of the total, the Authority managed to address 40,355 complaints against Cellular Mobile Operators (CMOs), Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL), Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and
Wireless Local Loop (WLL) during the period.
The regulator in its 2018 report on Sunday showed details of complaints received against each service type which included 26,829 complaints received against CMOs during the period and redressed 26,752 with 99.71 per cent redressal percentage.
The number of complaints received against PTCL was 12,873 and Authority addressed 12,803 with 99.46 redressal percentage.
PTA also received 766 complaints against ISPs during one year and redressed all of them while 34 complaints received against WLL operators which were also redressed.
The report further revealed that almost 50 per cent complaints against Cellular Mobile Operators were of “Misuse of Service” which included complaints related to fraudulent, unsolicited, spamming and obnoxious communication.
Since most of the population is using mobile services, therefore, over 65 per cent of total complaints received at PTA were against them.
PTA further categorizes these complaints and resolves them according to available legal tools in cooperation with respective operators. The individual complaints are although of same nature, however, some remains to be different and require different strategy altogether to resolve.
One such issue relates to charges on international roaming on data services. An alarming issue is of fake text messages and phone calls from unknown numbers enticing subscribers with attractive prizes, lotteries, and plots or winning any drawing in which telecom consumers are being deceived and deprived of their hard earned money.
Also, calls and marketing messages from unwanted numbers have become a nuisance for telecom users depriving them of their right to privacy.
To address these issues, PTA felt a strong need of raising awareness on these issues in print and electronic media against “deceptive, fraudulent calls & SMSs, unsolicited/marketing/ spamming calls & SMSs, obnoxious, unwanted calls & SMSs.” The campaign was broadcast through radio, text messages and newspapers to raise maximum awareness among customers.
Customers using mobile phones were informed and alerted through this advertisement that they should not transfer any cash (Mobicash, Upaisa, TimePay, Easypaisa etc.) or phone credits in response to
such calls and SMSs from unknown numbers.
Different modes of communication were used to highlight the issue and how to report such incidences to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and PTA.
