Service in parts of Lahore, Sialkot, Kasur, Sahiwal, Bahawalnagar and Bahawalpur near the Indian border is being affected by the bandwidth interference from Indian territories, reported Dawn.
Citing a source at Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, dawn said that the main cause of the interference is the service of TATA Mobile and Reliance Communications of India that has the same frequency bandwidths as the ones allocated to some Pakistani cellular companies by the Frequency Allocation Board (FAB).
The PTA and FAB have carried out a joint survey on the complaints of cell phone companies in this regard. According to the survey, interference has caused a ‘calculable depreciation’ in quality of mobile telecommunication services in the areas of Punjab near the Pakistan-India border.
Internal surveys in the telecommunication industry have also revealed that there is also a ‘significant increase’ in the interference on the bandwidth used by various security forces in the country, said the Dawn.
“There is resentment among some cellular operators as they have been unable to improve the quality of service despite large investments to gain consumer goodwill,” the source said, adding that as the allocated bandwidths continued to be cluttered with interference, certain companies operating in Pakistan had lost customer confidence.
ProPakistani earlier reported that issue has been taken up by Ministry of Telecom and IT. We were further told that IT & Telecom Division drafted SOP that has been forwarded to Frequency Allocation Board for their input, after which SOP will be forwarded to PTA for implementation, very soon.
It merits mentioning here that there are relevant regulations from ITU/APT to follow in case of spill over signals.