PTA survey finds most broadband providers falling short, only one clears all tests
File photo: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) headquarters in Islamabad (Wikimedia Commons) — not from the survey.
The PTA broadband survey for the third quarter of 2026 has laid bare the poor state of fixed broadband in Pakistan. Of the 12 operators tested from the subscriber’s side between July and September, only one cleared every benchmark — and several household names could not even deliver the download speeds they advertise.
Multinet worst at the user end
At the user end, Wide Band Communications in Peshawar was the only operator to pass all eight indicators. Multinet Pakistan’s service in Rawalpindi came out worst, meeting just two of the eight — a 25 percent compliance score. Multinet was not alone on download speed: Cyber Internet, Connect Communications, Nexlinx, PTCL, Nayatel and Burak Tech also fell short of the regulator’s rule that a connection must deliver more than 80 percent of its advertised download speed.
Pace Telecom weakest at the network end
The network-end survey, which covered 23 operators across 21 cities, found 16 of 28 city-operator entries fully compliant, with the rest scoring between 57.14 and 85.71 percent. Pace Telecom and Broadcasting recorded the lowest score, 57.14 percent in Abbottabad, after its core network stayed up 99.73 percent of the time against a required 99.9 percent, and its access network managed 97.13 percent against a 99 percent benchmark. Falcon Broadband in Vehari recorded jitter of 40.61 milliseconds, nearly three times the 15-millisecond ceiling. On the brighter side, every operator met the latency thresholds and the minimum throughput of 4 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up.
How the survey was done
The PTA’s Enforcement Division ran both surveys under the Fixed Broadband Quality of Service Regulations, 2022, testing speeds in the field and inspecting operators’ network operation centres. The user-end exercise covered 12 operators in 15 cities; the network-end exercise covered 23 operators in 21 cities. Seven indicators were measured: bandwidth utilisation, core and access network availability, local and international latency, jitter, and download and upload speeds.
