Pakistan Telecommunication Authority-PTA

Pakistan Telecom Authority - The Telecom Regulator PTA, as regulator of the telecom sector of Pakistan, strives to establish a competitive, fair, progressive, consumer oriented and business friendly regulatory environment in the country. Pakistan Telecom sector is playing a pivotal role in Pakistan’s economy where it is contributing in employment generation, financial inclusion, attracting investment, providing innovation opportunities, besides contribution of huge resources to national exchequer. PTA’s success as a progressive regulator has been recognized by International Telecommunication Union (ITU), an organ of United Nations, placed PTA at an advanced level of G5 (fifth generation) regulator. PTA Vision “Create a Fair Regulatory Regime to Promote Investment, Encourage Competition, Protect Consumer Interest and Ensure High Quality ICT Services.” Our Key Objectives • Creating a conducive and rule based telecom sector environment where local as well as foreign operators provide modern, affordable and uninterrupted telecom services across Pakistan. • Legal and regulatory frameworks are developed according to international best practices keeping in view the local requirements. • PTA ensures healthy competition in the market for provision of modern telecommunication services to the consumers and a healthy investment environment for the operators. • It is ensured that latest technology and services are available in the country so that people of Pakistan enjoy modern telecom services. • PTA contributes to the national exchequer in the form of license fees, regulatory dues etc. The telecom sector also contributes to the national exchequer in the form of taxes and duties on the services. • PTA also understands and ensures the importance of telecom services in development of other sectors of the economy and therefore creates forward and backward linkages accordingly. • In order to facilitate the consumer while providing quality telecom services, PTA ensures direct relationship and has therefore setup Consumer Support Center that provides ease in lodging complaints and their management. • With diverse international connectivity options, PTA aims at uninterrupted international connectivity with number of undersea cables and Optic Fiber Networks laid down across the country and connecting border countries like China, Iran and Afghanistan. • PTA intends to maximize the proliferation of broadband services in the country and therefore strives to ensure fixed and mobile broadband services availability and access to maximum population. • Financial stability of the sector is our goal and therefore PTA aims to ensure growing sector revenues and increasing foreign and local investments in the sector, which in turn benefits the financial stability of the country. • Ensuring systems/networks/infrastructures in place that can facilitate national agendas like documentation of the sector, elimination of smuggling and grey traffic and increase in revenue collection. Device Identification, Registration and Blocking System (DIRBS) is one such example. • Promoting local mobile device manufacturing to fulfil increasing demand and reduce reliance on imported handsets. PTA has issued authorizations to 33 companies for manufacturing of handset devices till now.