Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) is currently looking to pass an amendment to their Telecom Consumer Protection Regulation, 2009. These amendments are being pushed to protect consumer rights in a dynamic market.
The amendment will basically make telecom operators push any promotional package of their choice to their consumers as long as they don’t have any lottery element attached to it. If you recall, inami schemes were previously banned by the Supreme Court but due to loopholes in the definition, the operators simply changed inami schemes to promotional offers. With the passage of this amendment, telecom operators would also have to share any commercial practice, at least ten working days in advance to the PTA.
This of course has made many corporate heads a bit unhappy as quite often promotional packages are either kept a secret or introduced in the span of 2-3 working days to either get a leg up on the competition or to counter already existing offers.
Currently, the telecom operators are mauling over the whole amendment and would submit their feedback to PTA shortly, after which the bill would be regularized with the name of Telecom Consumer Protection (Amendment) Regulations, 2015.
Of course, we have skimmed over most points mentioned in the amendment, for further information you can always read the full amendment which can be found in the file attached below.
You can download the copy of proposed amendments in Telecom Consumer Protection Regulation from here (Word Document, 30KB).