Breakthrough: PTA to add ‘customer experience’ to existing survey

Addition meant to take feedback post-spectrum auction.

KARACHI: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has initiated the process of conducting the first “quality of service and customers’ experience survey” for both voice and data services since the introduction of mobile broadband in April 2014.

The telecom sector’s regulator body, which conducts the old-fashioned quality of service (QoS) survey of cellular subscribers every quarter, has for the first time included the customer experience in the routine exercise, according to official sources.  It plans to conduct the survey this year.

The PTA has already invited expression of interest (EoI) for third party services for customer experience and operation support subsystem (OSS), which is also available on its website.

Read: Better communication: PTA making efforts to improve customer service

The regulator has asked the bidders to provide the former with a monitoring system that has monitoring capabilities in two areas: monitoring of customers’ experience and Performance Management from OSS of mobile networks in Pakistan.

“We are trying to make the QoS survey more comprehensive by adding customer experience to it, which is a new concept,” an official said, adding that they would continue to conduct the QoS.

“The new addition will allow us to get additional samples or reading directly from users through,” the official said.

“It will increase our sample size,” he added, explaining that the samples collected via old method had limitations while the new solution would touch the entire user base.

“We want to meet the expectations of Pakistan’s cellular and mobile broadband users by introducing this cutting-edge technology. We already have the budget set aside for this purpose and hope to do it this year,” the official said.

It will be the first time since the introduction of third generation (3G) and 4G mobile technologies in 2014, that PTA would conduct QoS and QoE surveys for mobile broadband in addition to the voice services.

Read: PTA blocks 27.5m SIM cards as biometric verification process ends

Last year, PTA had trained its staff to effectively monitor the QoS parameters in 3G and 4G services and also upgrade its equipment for that purpose.

The purpose of the new solution and the survey is to enable PTA to monitor licensed QoS Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of 3G and 4G networks in the country and ensure that quality standards are met and users get the services at anticipated quality standards.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 7^th, 2015.

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