Significant Decline in 3G/4G Users Cast Doubts on PTA’s Justifications

The number of 3G/4G users in Pakistan has significantly decreased in the last couple of months. According to the stats on the PTA’s website, Pakistan has lost around 0.74 Million 3G/4G users in the mentioned time period. Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has cited floods and economic slowdown as the reasons for the decline as you can see in the given image.

Vague Reasons:

However, we find these reasons a little bit vague and disagree with the national telecom regulator.

Why?

First, the country was hit by floods a year ago, so we wonder how those floods contributed to the decline of 3G/4G subscribers in the country in the last two months. Simultaneously, the country is facing a severe economic crisis for more than a year but still, the telcos didn’t exorbitantly increase the price of internet packages.

So what went wrong? Well, we aren’t sure, but these can’t be the sole reasons for such a significant decline in 3G/4G users in the last couple of months. There can be other reasons for this decline including poor quality of service, political reasons, etc.

In addition to 3G/4G users, PTA data shows that the number of cellular subscribers, broadband penetration along with teledensity declined in Pakistan for the second consecutive month. It is astonishing to see such a decline in just 2 months. The national regulator should take notice of this decrease in the number of 3G/4G users and overall cellular subscribers. It should ask telecom operators to provide a list of more valid reasons with stats and figures for the decline.

PTA’s Response:

The number of 3G/4G subscribers in Pakistan has shown a year-on-year growth of 9%. In May 2023, the total number of subscribers reached 124.1 million, compared to 113.9 million in May 2022. There has been a slight decline of 0.7 million subscribers during the months of April and May 2023. Moreover, the factor behind decrease/decline can be attributed to the implementation of Multi Finger Biometric Verification System (MBVS). Fraudulent/artificial sale activation of SIM cards has largely stopped.

As per the instructions from PTA, operators were required to recycle fraudulently activated SIMs that had been dormant for the last six months. Consequently, a decline in subscribers was observed due to the closure of these fraudulent SIMs.

PTA maintains a steadfast commitment to transparency by consistently publishing telecom subscriber data, accurately reflecting both increase and decrease in subscriptions, based on reporting by the operators.

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