The telecom industry has warned the government of “connectivity load-shedding” if prolonged electricity outages continued, amid high fuel costs and stringent conditions for the import of batteries.
Leading cellular mobile operators (CMOs) informed the telecom sector regulator on Tuesday that if the ongoing electricity load-shedding was not controlled, the telecom operators would be constrained to notify a force majeure situation. As per CMOs, the circumstances were outside the control of major telecom service providers of Pakistan.
According to a letter written to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the telecom operators were already facing service degradation due to the prolonged power outages in different parts of the country.
Jazz CEO Aamir Ibrahim pointed out that the backup systems were not designed for the long-duration electricity supply disruption.
“To ensure consistent improvement in service quality and expand broadband services, a policy and regulatory environment that enable the mobile operators to remain financially healthy is critical,” said Ibrahim.
The letter highlighted that the current electricity shortfall was resulting in unplanned and prolonged load-shedding in various parts of the country, especially in rural areas.
“Despite having backup power available in the form of generators/ batteries, the cellular operators still find it almost impossible to cope with the quantum of these power outages that are beyond their dimensioned backup capacity,” the letter added.
Telecom towers had generators and some had backup batteries, similarly, the backend equipment too was powered by batteries and generators, but the high cost of diesel was putting financial burden on the industry, said a senior executive of a CMO.
The executive cautioned that if the same conditions continued, there could be blackouts at certain towers and resultantly there would be no telephony or data service in that area. The official warned that it could happen randomly for different companies at different places.
As per the letter, the situation has worsened further after the State Bank of Pakistan’s imposition of 100% cash margin restriction on the import of network/ backup equipment, including batteries. “It is impeding CMOs’ ability to provide backup capacity to telecom sites during the extended power outages,” the letter added.
Another industry official said that whereas the world was moving fast into the digital arena, the people of Pakistan would be at a great loss, and would be pushed into darkness.
“Unless the government joins our collective efforts to ensure connectivity for every Pakistani, the industry and the people will remain at a disadvantage. Without connectivity, our IT ambitions will remain unachieved, slowing our progress to become a fully-fledged digital economy,” he said.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 29th, 2022.
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