By Hamza Faisal
Pakistan's telecom regulator has run out of patience with the country's mobile operators. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) says its deadline for fixing network gaps in Islamabad and Rawalpindi expired on October 31, and the companies that missed the mark will now have to explain themselves — with the regulator's chairman set to inspect services personally.
The directive covered all four mobile operators — Jazz, Zong, Telenor and Ufone — which were told to improve coverage and resolve service problems across the twin cities. PTA Director General Enforcement Brigadier (Retd) Amir Shehzad spent the final days of the deadline in the field, running mobile network drive tests across some of the capital region's busiest corridors.
The test route covered Blue Area, Kashmir Highway, Margalla Road, Iran Avenue, Peshawar Road, 26 Number Chungi, Tarnol and Islamabad International Airport, with further checks along the Express Highway and at T-Chowk Rawat. During the tests, Shehzad contacted operators' officials by phone to discuss service quality on the spot.
What happens now that the deadline has passed
With the deadline expired, the PTA says it will seek explanations from operators over poor network performance. The authority will also hand each company a report of the coverage gaps its teams found, and the operators will be required to address the identified problems immediately.
PTA Chairman will personally inspect telecom services in Islamabad and Rawalpindi in the next phase of the enforcement push, according to Shehzad. The regulator has stressed that providing reliable mobile and internet services remains its top priority, and that it will not compromise on quality of service.
The warning carries weight. Separate reporting this week put the fines imposed on mobile and internet companies over the past four years at more than Rs3.41 billion for failing to meet quality-of-service standards — a sign that the regulator has already been willing to penalise poor performance, not just warn about it.
Why the twin cities became the test case
The October deadline was set after years of complaints about dropped calls, slow mobile internet and patchy coverage in the capital region. The PTA had formally directed operators to eliminate coverage gaps across Islamabad's sectors and surrounding areas, all parts of Rawalpindi, and along key corridors including Kashmir Highway and the Islamabad Expressway.
Operators were told to install new sites wherever signals were weak and to pair that expansion with newly allocated 5G spectrum bands, so the fix would be lasting rather than temporary. The twin-city drive was part of a wider enforcement push: the PTA's ten zonal offices ran a week-long nationwide monitoring drive from October 8 to 14, and inspection teams had already checked 115 telecom sites across the country in the week before that.
What subscribers should watch for
For users in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, the next test is visible: whether dead zones shrink, calls stop dropping and mobile internet speeds improve in the areas the PTA flagged. The gap reports now going to operators give the regulator a concrete checklist to measure them against, and the chairman's personal inspection raises the stakes beyond routine paperwork.
The broader question is whether the twin-city model spreads. If the PTA follows through with explanations, penalties and published findings here, operators elsewhere in Pakistan can expect the same treatment — and subscribers in other cities will have a precedent to point to when their own networks fall short.
