Islamabad: PTCL and DSL Operators have signed a DSL agreement for provision of broadband services under the auspices of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). The signing ceremony was held at PTA HQs, Islamabad where Chairman PTA, Dr. Mohammed Yaseen, Member (Finance) Syed Nasrul Karim Ghaznavi, Member (Technical) Dr. Khawar Siddique Khokhar, Senior representatives of PTCL and DSL operators were present. Under this agreement, DSL operators will now have a choice to acquire IP bandwidth from any other operator in addition to PTCL which will enable DSL operators to offer broadband services at competitive tariffs.

It may be mentioned that PTCL and DSL operators were unable to reach consensus on some of the issues such as permissibility to DSL operators to lease bandwidth from other private operators, laying of fiber in PTCL collocation sites, prices and discounts offered by PTCL for domestic and international bandwidth and provisioning of VPN services. Resultantly, the DSL interconnect agreement was pending for quite some time. Taking cognizance of the issue, several meetings under the supervision of PTA were held between PTCL and DSL operators to resolve these issues. PTA also carried out detailed consultation with PTCL and DSL operators regarding finalization of DSL Interconnect agreement.

Chairman PTA said that owing to this agreement and resulting competition broadband tariffs will be reduced significantly. This would not only attract new broadband subscribers but would also motivate dialup users to shift to broadband services thereby increasing the broadband penetration in Pakistan.

Khurram A. Mehran

Director (PR)