PTA broadband survey exposes slow uploads, unstable connections and widespread service failures across major operators, including PTCL, Nayatel and Multinet.
ISLAMABAD, Nov. 12 (Focus Pakistan) — Only one operator in the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s latest user-end broadband survey cleared all eight quality tests: Wide Band Communications in Peshawar. Every other operator fell short somewhere, on download speed, lag, jitter or lost data, and the list of failures includes PTCL, Nayatel and Multinet.
ISLAMABAD, Nov. 12 (Focus Pakistan) — Only one operator in the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s latest user-end broadband survey cleared all eight quality tests: Wide Band Communications in Peshawar. Every other operator fell short somewhere, on download speed, lag, jitter or lost data, and the list of failures includes PTCL, Nayatel and Multinet.
PTA’s Enforcement Division ran two surveys between July and September. The first tested 12 operators in 15 cities from the subscriber’s side. The second covered 23 operators across 21 cities at the network end, including inspections of operators’ network operation centres. The regulator measured each operator against the Fixed Broadband Quality of Service Regulations, 2022.
Multinet’s Rawalpindi operation met just two of eight indicators, a 25% score that puts it among the weakest performers in the user-end survey. Cyber Internet Services scored 37.5% in Lahore and 50% in Islamabad.
The two companies appear on almost every failure list. Multinet missed the benchmarks for download speed, local latency, international terrestrial latency, jitter and packet loss. Cyber Internet failed on download speed, local latency, jitter and packet loss, and it also broke the four-second limit for loading a webpage.
PTCL failed on four counts: download speed, local latency, jitter and packet loss.
What the PTA broadband survey measured
PTA rules require a connection to deliver more than 80% of the advertised download speed. On xDSL lines, upload speed must reach at least 25% of the package speed. On other technologiesit must exceed half. A customer on a 20 Mbps fibre package should therefore get at least 16 Mbps down and more than 10 Mbps up.
Also Read: PTA Calls Twin-City Networks ‘Excellent.’ Its Own Reports Show Gaps
Many don’t. PTA singled out upload speed as one of the most widespread weaknesses in the user-end survey. On download speed, Connect Communications, Nexlinx Networks, Nayatel and Burak Tech all joined Multinet, Cyber Internet and PTCL in falling short.
The problems go beyond raw speed. NTC also failed local latency. PTCL, NTC, Cyber Internet, Nexlinx and Multinet all recorded excessive jitter, the uneven delivery of data that freezes video calls and garbles online meetings. Cyber Internet, PTCL, Connect Communications, Nayatel, Multinet and SCO each lost more than the 1% of data packets the rules allow. Nexlinx joined Cyber Internet in breaching the webpage loading limit.
Falcon Broadband in Vehari posted the worst single figure. Its jitter reached 40.61 milliseconds, nearly three times the 15-millisecond ceiling.
Strong core, weak delivery
The network-end survey tells a gentler story. Every operator surveyed met the local and international latency thresholds and the minimum throughput of 4 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up. Sixteen of 28 city-operator entries passed all seven indicators. The rest scored between 57.14% and 85.71%.
Pace Telecom and Broadcasting scored lowest, at 57.14% in Abbottabad. Its core network stayed up 99.73% of the time against a required 99.9%. Its access network managed 97.13% against a 99% benchmark. Over a 30-day month, that gap works out to roughly 21 hours of downtime, where the rules allow about seven.
Some networks also pushed bandwidth use past the 80% ceiling. That leaves little headroom when traffic peaks in the evening, which is when speeds drop.
The two surveys sit uneasily side by side. Operators’ core networks mostly pass, while the service that reaches subscribers fails far more often.
The quarter’s sample also shrank. In the second quarter of 2026, PTA assessed 34 operators across 24 cities.
PTA orders fixes
The regulator has asked non-compliant operators to add capacity, optimise their networks, manage congestion, improve routing, raise network availability and cut jitter. The Enforcement Division will run follow-up tests to check whether the operators have fixed the problems. PTA’s findings name no penalties.
Until those tests happen, subscribers in the flagged cities keep paying full price for packages that, by the regulator’s own measurements, fall short.
