By Vaughan O’Grady
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has reviewed the country’s existing broadband quality of service regulations, which date back to 2014, and has issued what it calls the Fixed Broadband Quality of Service (QoS) Regulations 2022 after consultation with stakeholders.
It’s not too surprising that an update was necessary, with the arrival or growth over the years of new and emerging fixed broadband technologies including xDSL, DOCSIS 3.x, FTTH and satellite broadband.
Given these and other technological advances in fixed broadband networks, more stringent thresholds have been set for existing key performance indicators (KPIs) covering latency, packet loss and jitter, among other areas.
In addition a new set of KPIs has been introduced, focusing on voice over IP (VoIP) services, web page loading time, and bandwidth utilization. The implementation of net neutrality is also a focus of the new regulations: broadband service providers are to treat all internet communications equally.
The PTA adds that fixed broadband internet speeds for download data throughput should now be at least 4Mbps (up from 256 kbps) and 2Mbps upload. It also mandates that 80 per cent of the advertised download speeds should be available at all times to the end users.
QoS surveys and testing are planned to support these measures, along with the use of pre-configured devices by volunteers to measure line performance.
