Islamabad: Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has said that International Roaming for Afghan based operators is disabled in Pakistan and there is no ramming service available for afghan based SIM’s in Pakistan. Mobile companies also cleared that they are not providing any roaming facility to any of the Afghan Operators including Roshan Telecom, Etisalat, MTN Telecom and Afghan Wireless.
Afghan SIM roaming is blocked in Pakistan since June 2015 in order to stop terrorism. Previously, Director General of ISPR Lieutenant General Asim Saleem Bajwa said that the Charsadda attack was controlled from Afghanistan and the mastermind was using Afghan SIM to direct the attack and clear that the sale of Afghan SIM in Pakistan is illegal.
Issue was raised after one of the Pakistanis private TV channel claims sell of afghan SIM’s in some cities of countries including Chaman. After that PTA clarified that no afghan SIM can be operated in Pakistan because any SIM of Afghanistan will not be able to work inside Pakistan territory but is may work near border areas because of spillover coverage and they have contacted Afghan embassy to resolve this spillover coverage issue.
All Pakistani operators are allowed to roam in Afghanistan and all Pakistani SIM’s are working perfectly in all over Afghanistan but any Afghan landline or mobile number can call any Pakistan landline or mobile number from Afghanistan just like an international call.
Experts say that these spillover GSM signals cannot travel beyond 30 kilometer in ideal and not far from 8 to 12 kilometer in a usual condition.