Telecom operators have warned the government of potential connectivity failures if the power crisis continues, owing to the exorbitantly high fuel costs and tough conditions on import of batteries.
According to Dawn, leading cellular mobile operators (CMOS) have written a letter to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) highlighting that due to the severe power outages they are finding it impossible to deal with the situation despite having generators and batteries for backup. The telcos said that the duration of power outages has exceeded the backup capacity.
The letter has drawn the attention of the telecom regulator to “critical economy-wide factors” that are directly impeding and are expected to further severely constrain the ability of operators to meet the quality of service obligations.
The telecom operators said that the significant increase in fuel prices has placed extra constraints on the provision of backup for their base transceiver station (BTS) sites.
Adding that the extra fuel consumption to ensure backup also goes against the government’s objective of rationalizing fuel consumption in the ongoing tough economic situation, the telcos have warned that the situation has made maintaining network availability a “massive challenge.”
The letter mentioned that the condition of a 100 percent cash margin restriction on the import of network/backup equipment, including batteries imposed by the State Bank of Pakistan has further aggravated the situation.
CMOs’ said that the situation has severely dented their ability to roll out additional sites to meet the licensed quality of service requirements. It has also drastically impeded the addition of more backup capacity to overcome the power outages, the letter said.
The telecom companies have asked the PTA to help the industry keep providing essential telecom services to the masses.
The operators have warned PTA that if the outages continue and other issues were not resolved, they would be “constrained to notify force majeure situation under special circumstances”.
