A notice has been sent out by PTCL today claiming that its infrastructure is damaged by a number of entities including individuals, private and government construction firms, municipal, district or provincial contractors, real estate developers, road builders and so on, reported Propakistani. It further notified that any future infrastructural damage whether accidental or intentional will lead to strict legal action being taken which includes:
- As per Telegraph Act 1885, any effort to disrupt PTCL’s infrastructure can get an individual a sentence of up to three years and fine to cover the infrastructure damage.
- As per Pakistan Telecommunication Act (1996), any attempt to disrupt telecom infrastructure is dealt with a prison term of up to three years and fine of up to Rs. 10 million or both.
- As per Electronic Transactions Ordinance (2002), anyone causing damage to telecom infrastructure can be put in jail for up to seven years and a fine of up to Rs. 10 million.
PTCL, in its notice, also added that infrastructure damage causes service disruption leading to customer dissatisfaction and ultimately leads to loss of business for many.
A report on country-wide outage from December 2016 is still pending following an investigation that was launched by PTCL. The incident had caused PTCL’s landline and DSL services to be disrupted nationwide along with dependent operators being adversely impacted.
