Tech Desk 
Nov 20, 2025
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Thursday said nearly 9,000 mobile network sites across the country are still struggling to stay online due to long outages of electricity, limited access to commercial power, delays in Right of Way approvals, and repeated incidents of theft and vandalism.
These issues make up around 17% of the total number of mobile sites nationwide, with the impact most severe in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, and Gilgit-Baltistan.
According to PTA's latest performance review covering January to June 2025, cellular operators have met most of the service benchmarks for call completion and data throughput during the six-month period.
The nationwide Operations Support System (OSS) Key Performance Indicator (KPI) analysis recorded an average call completion rate of 99.05% and average data throughput of 6.73 Mbps.
However, overall network availability could not reach the required 99% level because of ongoing energy shortages and restricted access to several field sites.
PTA also received 8,003 consumer complaints regarding poor coverage and service quality through its CMS. From these, 7,937 complaints, 99.17%, were resolved.
The telecom company conducted a total of 89 planned and 78 complaint-based QoS surveys on major cities, highways, motorways, and railway routes to assess real-time network performance.
The regulator declared that enforcement actions have started against operators for failing to meet the prescribed mandatory service standards.
Moreover, non-compliance cases are being monitored closely, and operators are required to make timely corrections. PTA has urged citizens and public representatives to report specific weak-signal areas so that operators can address them more efficiently.
Over the last five years, PTA has issued 39 show-cause notices and 17 warning letters to telecom operators for violating service requirements. These actions led to penalties worth Rs68.9 million. So far, Rs13.6 million has been recovered, while 11 cases are still under litigation.
