If protracted power outages persist amid high fuel prices and strict restrictions on battery imports, the telecom sector has warned the government that connection breakdowns would occur.
In a letter to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, leading cellular mobile operators (CMOS) Jazz, Telenor, PTCL, and Ufone stated that “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,” (PTA).
The purpose of the letter was to alert the telecom regulator to “some critical economy-wide factors, which are directly preventing and are expected to further severely restrict the operators’ ability to meet the existing [quality of service] obligations… [key performance indicators] as well as our network rollout obligations under the new license conditions.”
They bemoaned the fact that the provision of generator backup for their base transceiver station (BTS) sites was coming under additional pressure due to the fast-rising cost of fuel.
Additionally, they said that the government’s goal of rationalizing fuel use in these trying times was being undermined by the additional fuel consumption required for backup, and that the circumstances had made it a “huge struggle” for the operators to maintain network uptime.
The letter further emphasized that since the State Bank of Pakistan placed a 100% cash margin ban on the import of network/backup equipment, including batteries, the situation had gotten worse.
According to the letter, the circumstance has “severely hampered” the CMOs’ ability to add new sites to fulfil the licensed quality of service standards and “dramatically impedes addition of extra backup capacity to counter these lengthy power outages.”
To read our blog on “Due to the expensive LNG tenders, Pakistan’s power problem may worsen,” click here.