Government of Pakistan, through Cabinet Division, has advertised the job vacancies for three PTA members for the third time during the span of five months. In its latest advertisement, Cabinet Division said that it is looking for three PTA members, i.e. Member Finance, Member Technical and Member Compliance and Enforcement for Pakistan Telecommunication Authority. As before, the job term for all the members will be [...]

Anusha Rehman, the newly appointed and rather excited IT and Telecom Minister, has said that new government has already started working on the auction of long-pending 3G spectrum auction in the country. Ms. Rehman tweeted that PML(N) is committed to swiftly execute the 3G spectrum auction in just few months only. It merits mentioning here that Anusha Rehman didn’t mention 3G licenses only, instead she [...]

Large Tax-payer Unit (LTU) Islamabad of Federal Board of Revenue yesterday recovered Rs. Rs 2.038 from Pakistan Telecommunication Authority by freezing its accounts. According to sources, bank accounts were held and then freed after the recovery of unpaid taxes from year 2006. Pakistan Telecommunication Authority and LTU Islamabad are long running this dispute over taxes. There was a time when PTA hadn’t paid any taxes [...]

Islamabad High Court (IHC) has dismissed an intra court appeal filed by Sajjad Awan, Director General PTA challenging his posting as Director General HR Pool within PTA. Sajjad Awan, a closed aide of Farooq Awan, ex-Chairman of Pakistan Telecom Authority (PTA) was given charge of three most powerful posts of Director Generals in PTA, i.e., Enforcement, HR and Law in November 2012 despite having non [...]

Group photo of PTA officials with Dr. Sania Nishtar, Caretaker Federal Minister for IT and Telecom. Senior officials of Ministry of IT and Telecom are also present. Caretaker Federal Minister for Information Technology &Telecom (IT&T), Dr. Sania Nishtar visited Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Headquarters yesterday. Additional Secretary, Member Law , Member IT of MoIT Director Generals (DGs) of Different Divisions of PTA and senior officers [...]

Government of Pakistan’s binding of not issuing any new LDI license based on the sale-purchase agreement with Etisalat – under the sale of 26 percent shares of PTCL – got expired on March 22nd, 2013, after which Pakistan Telecommunication Authority is free to auction new LDI licenses now. Sources familiar with matter told ProPakistani that telecom regulator is likely to auction new LDI licenses, at [...]

Thanks to unlimited and in-expensive voice bundles, Pakistani cellular users make voice calls – to landline and other cellular networks – of over 16 billion minutes or 192.9 billion minutes per year. These stats were revealed by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority for year 2011-12 and it is likely that figure will go up further during the on-going year. Cellular outgoing traffic to local fixed line and [...]

Islamabad High Court has directed Cabinet Division to appoint members of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority on basis of 29 January 2013 advertisement, i.e., first advertisement it had published for the recruitment of members of the authority. Hearing the petition submitted by Wahaj us Siraj, CEO of Nayatel and Convener ISP Association of Pakistan (ISPAK), Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of IHC directed the government to strike down [...]

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has said that it received 33,310 complaints from users against telecom operators during FY2012, out of which 99 percent complaints were addressed and resolved. PTA said that telecom consumers registered these complains through various channels, i.e., online, email (complaints@pta.gov.pk), hotline (0800-55055), written complaints and faxes sent to PTA headquarter addresses and zonal offices. These consumer complaints were against cellular operators, fixed line, [...]

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, through a letter produced below, has directed all telecom operators to stop Inaami schemes (Prize schemes) with immediate effect. PTA letter, sent to all telecom operators, mentions that these directions are as per Islamabad High Court order. PTA demanded all operators to submit compliance report by tomorrow, i.e. March 21st, 2013. It merits mentioning here that PTA had previously directed telecom operators [...]

Annual revenues from telecom sector of Pakistan reached Rs. 411.4 billion during the fiscal year 2011-12 up from Rs. 362.9 billion a year ago, registering a growth of 12 percent, said a recent report published by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority. Report said that this growth in telecom revenues this year is significant especially when growth rate was marginal during last two years, i.e. 5.4 percent during [...]

Election Commission of Pakistan has once again communicated to Cabinet Division and directed it to not to hire Member Finance and Member Technical due to imposed ban on all kinds of recruitments till further notification. It merits mentioning here that Cabinet Division is in process of hiring Member Finance and Member Technical for Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, and in fact it had appointed Mr. Farooq Awan [...]

Mobile phone users in Pakistan exchanged a total of 237.58 billion text messages in 2011 (Jan 2011 to Dec 2011), up from 176 billion text messages that were shared in 2010, said a report published by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority. Report said that on average one mobile phone user sent 175 person to person SMS or text messages per month or 5.8 person to person SMS [...]

The Cabinet Division has withdrawn the notification of appointment of Farooq Awan as Member Finance Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) and assured the Lahore High Court (LHC) that the appointment will be made in a transparent manner in accordance with the rules and the PTA Act, reported The News. The written assurance was submitted by Secretary Cabinet Division Ms. Nargis Sethi in a contempt of court [...]

The Federal Communications Commission, the regulatory body in USA, has ordered all U.S. telecommunications service providers to freeze payments to Pakistani long-distance carriers for termination services in excess of 2 cents per minute. In an order issued on March 5th, 2013 and posted to the FCC website yesterday, the agency’s International Bureau agreed to partly grant an October 2012 petition by Vonage Holdings Corp. for [...]