The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) has started working on a new project entailing national roaming that would enable automatic SIM network transfer if no signal of the primary network is available in an area.
National Roaming Will be Beneficial for the People in Rural Areas
Furthermore, national roaming for the automatic SIM network transfer would serve rural areas with poor network availability problems. It is to be rolled out in the sparsely populated Balochistan province in the first stage. Moreover, PTA executives state that in the following phase national roaming will be launched along the motorways and highways.
The majority of the Balochistan population resides in isolated areas and mobile companies encounter difficulty in reaching this spread-out population. At the direction of the PTA, the mobile phone operators have established a collective technical team that will prepare a report within a month.
The said technical team would review traffic trends and systems, the officials stated. No additional charges will be levied for the usage of this service, as per the PTA officials. The billing procedure will be determined by the mobile phone corporations among themselves.
Multiple Cellular Networks Will be Involved in this New Arrangement
National roaming for automatic SIM network transfer is distinctly different from the nationwide roaming a mobile telecom firm offers to its customers. National roaming provides multiple cellular network operators to utilize the same infrastructure. A subscriber of network A is authorized to connect to a cellular tower established by a network B operator.
Read more: PTA Rolls Out a User-Friendly Complaint Management System (CMS) Mobile App
The notion of national roaming for automatic SIM network transfer has been addressed in Pakistan for almost a year. Records state that the major industry professionals have already considered some terms and requirements.
Ufone and SCO are Already Using this Scheme
At least two cellular organizations already have a similar settlement in place to the extent of Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) and Azad Jammu Kashmir (AJK). Ufone and SCO, the firm offering cellular services in GB and AJK, have an understanding that enables Ufone subscribers to stay connected while in these two regions.
Source: Samaa
