PTCL has surrendered a total of 59 million landline numbers that were lying vacant on its disposal for years.According to the letters received to MORE that were issued by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on July 13, 2012 to all the telecom operators, PTCL applied to surrender all unused number via two separate letters to the authority in December 2010 and January 2011.
In response to those letters, PTA cancelled 6,408,000 and 53,020, 000 numbers respectively in favor of PTCL.
It is a normal practice for telecom operators to keep acquiring numbering series in high volumes forecasting the future growth. PTA charges a rental at the rate of Rs. 1 per number in a year. In this way, PTCL saved more PKR 59 million which it has been spending every year on these redundant numbers.
Landline penetration started to decrease with the advent of mobile phone telephony in Pakistan. All the landline operators are finding it difficult to install additional network whereas demand for new landline numbers is decreasing.
Although PTCL had applied to surrender the number series way back in 2010 and 2011. It appears to be an inefficient and suspicious role on PTA’s part which did not respond to a genuine request of a telecom operator during all these years and now suddenly they surprised PTCL by issuing the cancellation letters.
We are waiting for an official version from PTA on the matter. Soon as we get it from them, we will update our readers.
Following are the letters MORE received.
