June 29, 2022 – Leading telecom firms have warned the government that prolonged power outages amid high fuel prices and strict conditions on battery imports could lead to connectivity blackouts in the country.
“Despite having backup power available in the form of generators and batteries, cellular operators are finding it almost impossible to cope with the quantum of these power outages that are beyond our dimensioned backup capacity,” cellular mobile operators (CMOs) Jazz, Telenor, PTCL and Ufone said to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) in a letter, copy of which is available with DRM.
“Through this communication we would, however, like to bring PTA’s attention to some critical economy-wide factors which are directly impeding and expected to further severely constrain the operators’ ability to meet the existing [quality of service] obligations/[key performance indicators] as well as our network rollout obligations under the new licence conditions,” read the joint statement.
The telecom operators stated that they were already facing service degradation due to prolonged power outages in different parts of the country. They further complain that the rapidly increasing fuel prices are not only placing extra constraints on the provision of generator backup for their base transceiver station (BTS) sites, but extra fuel consumption for backup is going against the “government’s objective of rationalising fuel consumption in these testing times”.
Considering the current situation, maintaining network availability and delivering quality of service has become a challenge for cellular mobile operators. The letter highlights that the State Bank of Pakistan’s recent imposition of 100 percent cash margin restriction on the import of network and backup equipment, including batteries, also worsens the situation.
“The imposition of increased LC cash margin has not only severely dented our ability to roll out more sites in order to meet the licensed quality of service requirements, it also drastically impedes addition of more backup capacity to counter these extended power outages.”
In case continuing power outages are not brought under control, telecom operators would be “constrained to notify force majeure situation under special circumstances”.
On June 17, telecom companies warned the Senate Standing Committee on Finance that there might be connectivity loadshedding in the next fiscal year in Pakistan with mobile phones being shut down for hours if the customs duty on fibre optic cable and other telecom taxes were not significantly reduced.
“We want to share the doomsday scenario with you as there will be connectivity loadshedding hitting the country in 2023 if the duty and taxes on fibre optic cable and other taxes on the telecom sector were not reduced substantially,” representatives from major telecom companies have been quoted as saying in several reports published by local news outlets. “There will be shutting down of mobile phones for hours and ATM services will be disrupted because there will be no connectivity ensured without fibre optic cables.”
The representatives also asked the government to reduce advance tax on prepaid cards from 15 to 10 percent.
The PTA had, however, responded to the reports by saying, “The mobile operators operate under the conditions, rules and regulations as laid out in the licence issued by the PTA,” the telecom operator said. “It is mandatory for the operators to provide uninterrupted services to the customers and if they fail to do so, the regulator has the authority to take appropriate action.”
