An understanding of the quality of the mobile networks at our disposal goes a long way in empowering us to make better choices. Therefore, the Quality of Service survey performed by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority for mobile phone operators was a very welcome development. The survey has analyzed 3G/4G speeds in nine cities across Sindh, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, with some very intriguing results.
The cities considered in the survey include Larkana, Nawabshah, Shikarpur, Sahiwal, Jhang, Bhakkar, Sahiwal, Dera Ismail Khan and Peshawar. Two key metrics were considered by the surveyors when analyzing the performance of mobile operators: signal strength and user data speed.
Armed with the collected data, PTA has released bar graphs which give us a sense of how the top mobile operators in the country, including Jazz, Ufone, Telenor and Zong, fare next to each other.
The following indicates 3G performance of all four mobile operators in terms of kbps. Currently, the minimum speed that a 3G network should be able to achieve is 256kbps, and as can be seen below, all networks have managed to cross that threshold by a fairly large margin, with Zong taking the lead.
3G Performance
On the other hand, the minimum threshold that a 4G network should be able to achieve at present is somewhere around 2 Mbps. Once again, all the 4G networks in Pakistan have managed to exceed it, with Jazz leading by quite a margin over here.
4G Performance
PTA also yielded data about the performance of 3G and 4G networks across all the cities that were surveyed. As can be noted by a cursory glance at the following bar graphs, Bhakkar takes the lead among 3G networks with data speeds of more than 9,000 kbps with Zong’s network.
Meanwhile, armed with Jazz’s network, Dera Ismail Khan exhibited the best 4G performance with speeds of more than 36 Mbps.
