CMPak is reportedly not contented with the spectrum that it bought last year to operate its 3G services, we have been told by the sources who are aware of the development.
CMPak, in this regards, has written a letter to Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to show its serious concerns over the frequency that was allocated to the company and said that there is sizable distortion in the spectrum and as a result company’s 3G services are severely impacted causing serious quality of service issues for the 3G consumers.
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority had auctioned 10Mhz of 3G spectrum from the 1900/2100MHz Band to Zong during last year’s spectrum auction against a license fee of US 306 million dollars.
Unfortunately, same frequency is used by some versions of DECT 6.0 wireless phones used by home-users causing disruption in the 3G services of Zong.
While PTA has banned such cordless phones and importers of such cordless phones are also raided and fined but seemingly the issue hasn’t been fully resolved as of yet.
A Zong Spokesperson confirmed ProPakistani that they have approached PTA and requested the regulator to either get their frequency freed up from any outside disruption including but not limited to the noise caused by cordless phones or change the frequency that was allocated to Zong; so that company is able to offer seamless 3G services to its customers.
Zong said that it wouldn’t be able to maintain quality of service for 3G users if situation is not dealt amicably by PTA. This will not only result into degraded 3G services for customers but will also cause loss to Zong’s revenues.
It won’t be out of place to mention that Ministry of IT has been tasked to auction remaining 3G spectrum with-in next few months. There is one remaining block of 10Mhz spectrum from 1800Mhz band that went unsold during last year’s spectrum auction.
It is yet to be seen if PTA will change frequency for Zong’s 3G spectrum or it will continue hunting down cordless phone sellers and users, which may take some time.
Update: An earlier version of this story had incorrectly mentioned that Zong isn’t happy with 4G spectrum.