PTA tells lawmakers its fines on mobile operators are stuck behind court stay orders
Five show cause notices in three months, a three month grace period before each one, and rural power cuts of up to 16 hours a day: the regulator's account to parliament of why service has not improved.
Pakistan's telecom regulator has imposed fines on mobile operators that it has not collected, because the operators obtained stay orders from courts. Major General (retd) Hafeez ur Rehman, chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), told the National Assembly Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunication this on 3 November. The committee, chaired by Syed Amin ul Haq, met at Parliament House in Islamabad.
The chairman described the enforcement chain. PTA surveys an area, gives the operator three months to improve service, surveys again, and issues a show cause notice if nothing has changed. Five notices went out in the previous three months. He called a notice one of the last options available, because penalties lead to long legal disputes. The authority's director general for enforcement said decisions in some cases had begun to arrive, which could help recovery.
Committee members were unconvinced. They said service quality had not reached the required standard in about two and a half years of repeated meetings, that WhatsApp calls keep dropping in Karachi and Islamabad, and that service in some smaller cities and remote districts is almost absent. Member Aasia Ishaq said 4G had stopped working properly after 5G services began. Haq ordered all operators to improve services immediately.
Power cuts and 5G rollout
The regulator's main explanation was electricity. Where rural power is off for 12 to 16 hours a day, the chairman said, towers do not work properly. He also said about 70 percent of 5G services had been rolled out in Karachi since the spectrum auction, with around 2,300 towers upgraded for 5G. The committee also deferred the Electronic Transactions Amendment Bill 2026 to its next meeting. The law ministry told members that consultations with the Pakistan Peoples Party were under way and that it expected consensus soon.
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The sequence the chairman described is slow by design. An operator gets three months to fix a fault, then a resurvey, then a notice, and a fine can follow only after that. A stay order then freezes collection. Five notices in three months is fewer than two a month, so enforcement is thin before any court is involved.
The power argument is credible for rural coverage. Twelve to 16 hours without grid power is half to two thirds of the day. Tower sites are normally fitted with batteries that last a few hours, so a longer outage depends on generators, which need fuel and site visits. That turns an outage into a running cost for the operator and explains weak service far from cities. It does not explain dropped calls in Karachi and Islamabad, which members also raised.
The 5G complaint is one member's claim, and the reports of the meeting give no measurement behind it. Resurvey results published by area and operator would show whether 4G service has fallen where 5G was added.
Still unknown are the total value of the stayed fines, which operators received the five notices, and when the courts will hear the cases. The committee has not announced the date of its next meeting, where those figures could first be put to the regulator.
