3G/4G Users Cross the 67 Million Mark

The number of 3G and 4G users in Pakistan has reached 67.48 million by the end of April 2019, said Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).

The number of mobile phone users now stands at 161.01 million compared to 159.024 million at the end of March, registering an increase of 1.986 million during the period under review.

A breakdown of company-wise users is listed below:

Jazz

Jazz’s total count for 3G users stood at 13.393 million by end April compared to 13.622 million by end-March, showing a decrease of 0.229 million. Jazz 4G users jumped from 8.774 million to 9.618 million during the same period.

Zong

Zong 3G subscribers increased from 8.764 million to 8.779 million while the number of 4G users jumped from 11.600 million to 12.056 million in the period under study.

Telenor

The number of 3G users of Telenor decreased from 8.764 million to 8.640 million highlighting a decline of 0.124 million. The number of 4G users increased from 5.905 million to 6.186 million.

Ufone

Ufone witnessed a decline of 0.2 million in its 3G subscriber base with numbers decreasing from 7.846 million to 7.646 million.

Teledensity

Teledensity for cellular mobile increased from 75.86% to 76.69% and the same for broadband subscribers reached 69.577 million by the end of April compared to 68.244 million by end-March.

Complaints

PTA received 5447 complaints from telecom consumers against different telecom operators including cellular operators, PTCL, LDIs, WLL operators and ISPs as of April 2019.

Jazz (Mobilink + Warid) leads the chart with 1,408 complaints while Telenor stands at second position with 1225 complaints. PTA said that it was able to get 5,429 complaints resolved i.e. 99.67 percent.

Cellular mobile subscribers constitute a major part of the overall telecom subscriber base, therefore, the maximum number of complaints belong to this segment. The total number of complaints against CMOs by April stood at 4,314.

In terms of the segregation of complaints on operator basis, a total of 1408 complaints were received against Jazz which is 32.63% of the total CMO related complaints.

Telenor, which has the second largest number of consumers, was also second with 1225 i.e. 28.39 percent complaints were received against it.

Zong stood third with 915 complaints i.e. 21.21 percent of total complaints.

Ufone had 766 complaints against its various services which make up 17.75 percent of the total CMO related complaints.

PTA also received 516 complaints against basic telephony where 506 were addressed during April 2019. Further 609 complaints were received against ISPs where 601 were addressed.