KARACHI: Pakistan Telecommunication Authority's (PTA's) first quality of service (QoS) survey for mobile broadband technology revealed that average download speed of 3G in the country stands at 2.8mbps and the average 4G/LTE download speed settles at 5.9mbps, which are not at par with global standards.In today's world, the average mobile broadband download speed of 4G is measured at 15.1mbps and 6.1mbps on 3G network whereas in Pakistan, Mobilink grabbed number one position with an average download speeds of 4.04mbps and average upload speeds of 3.17mbps on its 3G network. Zong fetched second position with average download speed of 3.66mbps and an average upload speed of 2.93mbps on 3G in various cities.

According to PTA's latest survey, Telenor received third position with average download speeds of 2.22mbps on its 3G network and average upload speeds of 1mbps, while Ufone stands at the last number with average 3G download speed of 1.27mbps and average upload speeds of 1mbps.As far as 4G/Long Term Evaluation (LTE) is concerned, only two players, Warid and Zong, offer the services. PTA survey revealed that Zong topped on 4G speeds with 9.4mbps average download speed and 6.1mbps of average download speeds. Warid achieved 5.95mbps of average download speeds and 2.9mbps of average upload speeds for its 4G/LTE services, PTA added.

The industry sources have shown dissatisfaction over the findings of PTA's QoS survey, and said that Warid's 4G/LTE speed was considered visibly much better then Zong, but surprisingly, PTA revealed that the Chinese based operator succeeded to achieve 9.4mbps download speed, which is quite an unbelievable discovery.Although Zong is capable enough to achieve such speed by its 10 MHz spectrum for 4G/LTE services, but its rival also has the ability to beat Zong by having world's top vendor, Ericsson, and lowest subscribers' base in the market that allows the company much room for better speed, the sources added.

The findings of UK based company, OpenSignal, which specializes in wireless coverage mapping, have questioned the PTA's results as it revealed in its third quarter of 2015 report that Pakistan stands at 65th number in the list of 67 4G/LTE equipped countries. According to the OpenSignal, Pakistan's average LTE download speed is 3mbps by the end of September 2015.

It is important to mention that OpenSignal included only Warid in its list as the company takes in only top performers, so it could be judged why Zong was not mentioned in world top broadband dynamics' observer.Likewise, in terms of LTE coverage, Pakistan stands at 39th position with 50% network availability, which means that Warid's customers, on average, could able to get an LTE signal 50% of the time by the end of September 2015, which is quite impressive as India stands in this ranking on 46 with 46% of LTE coverage.