Telenor Pakistan has been facing some crisis lately. Last year, Telenor cellular services were halted in AJK by FBR for the disparity on tax issues. At that time, FBR stated that Telenor offices were closed because of the non-payment of Rs. 2.85 billion in taxes. Now, according to ProPakistani, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has levied a penalty of Rs 50 million on Telenor Pakistan. While stating the reason, PTA said that the penalty was imposed on Telenor for not providing cellular services in AJK and GB for a particular period of time.
PTA Inflicts PKR 50 Million Penalty on Telenor for Unavailability of Cellular Services
In a statement, the national telecom regulator said,
Fine on Telenor was imposed due to non-adherence of the applicable regulatory framework while suffering breakdown of major communication services in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK).
Consequently, the users suffered greatly, and to address that PTA has now inflicted the fine on the Telenor. When asked from the Telenor spokesperson regarding the issue, he said that the cellular services were not halted by the company, and in reality, the services were forced out of the company-operated telecom towers and offices.
According to the spokesperson,
There’s no way we could have intimated our users of service closure in advance as we didn’t get any notice period ourselves.
Furthermore, the spokesperson said that in such a scenario we seek support from PTA, not a penalty. In contrast, PTA asked Telenor to apologize to all the affected users. It also directed the telecom operator to refund PKR 18 million unconditionally to the affected users and send the remaining amount of penalty (PKR 32 Million) to the PTA’s designated account within two weeks.
Source: ProPakistani
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