Traders protest poor mobile phone signals in Shangla

ALPURI: Traders in Shahpur town in the remote Shangla district on Monday staged a protest against what they described as weak mobile phone signals which have disrupted communication.

The protesters accused cellular operators of charging high monthly packages while delivering service that was “almost non-existent” for both calls and data. They said that connectivity problems had persisted for several months, leaving households, students, and businesses unable to rely on mobile voice or internet access.

The protesters asked the Shangla district administration and Federal Minister Engineer Amir Muqam to take up the matter with the main telecom operators to immediately rectify service shortfalls.

Protesters said that cellular companies should dismantle their towers and cease operations in the district if they could not provide service commensurate with the charges being collected.

They alleged that many of the cellular towers installed across Shangla had become non-functional and urged the companies to replace or properly calibrate equipment where needed.

Telecom technicians told the media that each tower was engineered to handle a defined number of simultaneous connections, often around 5,000 users, though capacity varies by configuration.

In Shangla, they said, equipment had in some cases been installed for far larger nominal subscriber counts while the actual live load ended up drawing from entire surrounding valleys.