Restoration of judges on November 2nd Position

Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif and PML-N eyes of the nation are on you, and we hope that you will not led down the nation. You got votes for only one thing is that is independent judiciary.

We hope that you will not bend down form your agenda.

PTCL local call duration cut to hit customers

Shaukat Aziz a looser prime minister of Pakistan sold PTCL a government owned Telecom Company at very low price and now they cut down duration of calls [i.e raised prices of local calls] which are now heights in the region.

According to DAWN News:

LAHORE, April 6: While the reduced local call duration is a rude awakening for the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited subscribers, the PTCL union says the ‘new packages’ are actually meant to make up for the huge deficit of over Rs9 billion the company is facing.

In a fresh move, the PTCL management has cut the local call duration from five to two minutes between 8am and 9pm. And from 9pm to 8am the call duration is four minutes. The system has been enforced from April 1, which means a 10-minute local call will cost a customer Rs10 plus tax.

Those who do not read newspapers are not aware of the latest cut on the local call duration. “A large number of my relatives are not aware of the cut for they ignored the ad run by the company last month or they simply don’t read newspapers,” said Mr Arshad Ahsan from Defence.

“When I told them what was in store for them from the PTCL, they were shocked,” he added.

According to Mr Ahsan, most of the housewives are in the habit of making long (local) calls to their close relatives and friends everyday. “They will learn about the cut only when they receive their April bills in May,” he said.

According to PTCL Union Action Committee Secretary-General Malik Maqbool Husain, “fleecing customers appears to be the only option the PTCL is left with to make up for its deficit. The switching of its 937,000 subscribers to other networks in a year or so is also a result of bad policies of the management.”

Maqbool said when the present management took over the company two years back, the PTCL was in Rs29 billion profit.

Apart from the local call duration reduction, the controversial Pakistan Package ‘imposed’ on the PTCL subscribers three months ago has now been made a regular feature with some changes to the ‘original’ scheme. Under the (original) package, inter-city calls from (PTCL) landline to landline and V-phone were free up to 5,000 minutes on a monthly charge of Rs199 and taxes. The subscribers, who were not interested in it, had been given an ‘option’ to deactivate their line (from the Pakistan Package) by calling the PTCL helpline 1236 during the period (three months).

Much to the surprise of the subscribers, the management has reduced free time from 5,000 to 2,500 minutes from April 1.

Where the management is applying ‘novel methods’ to its landline subscribers to generate ‘maximum’ revenue, it has not spared even those using Vfone and Internet.

The management had ‘offered’ three packages for Vfone users and made one mandatory on them in case they don’t choose one of them till March 31. Now (from April 1) Vfone Kafayat package had been ‘imposed’ on those who did not choose the other two with a line rent of Rs7 per day -- call from Vfone to PTCL (local) Rs0.99 per minute, Vfone to PTCL (NWD) Rs2 per minute and Vfone to mobile Rs2.5 per minute.

There are also complaints that the PTCL is ‘silently’ charging a new call after every 15 minutes to Internet users on dial-up connection using any non-PTCL ISP. According to Shahid Anwer, a Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad student, an official at the helpline has confirmed this. “It is unethical to charge without informing the consumers,” he said.

“This is a new trend of imposing so-called subscriber-friendly packages and the PTA must intervene,” says PTCL subscriber Hina Ali. She wonders as how a service provider is allowed to charge its subscribers at will in order to augment its revenue. “This is unfair.”

PTCL Lahore spokesman Jawad Hasan confirmed the cut in call duration. He, however, refused to respond to other packages and Internet-related queries.

PTA’s Islamabad spokesman Khurram Mehran was not available for a comment.