The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority put all four mobile networks through their paces on the busiest roads of Islamabad and Rawalpindi on Thursday, 5 November 2026 — and Jazz came out on top. In a live field exercise that tested real calls and real mobile data, rather than laboratory conditions, Jazz led its rivals on network speed, voice call consistency and overall data quality. For the roughly 75 million Jazz subscribers in Pakistan, and for anyone choosing a network in the twin cities, the result is the clearest official signal yet of which operator is performing best where it matters: on the street.
How PTA tested the networks
PTA’s teams did not sit in an office. Three dedicated teams fanned out across the twin cities at the same time, making live voice calls and running mobile data services while driving the capital’s main corridors. Their routes covered the New Islamabad International Airport, T-Chowk, Murree Road via Faizabad, Rawal Road, the old airport area, Srinagar Highway, Constitution Avenue and Club Road, along with other connecting roads. Senior PTA officials attended the exercise, including Member (Finance) Muhammad Naveed, Member (Compliance and Enforcement) Dr Khawar Siddique Khokhar, Member (Telecom) Muhammad Jahanzeb Rahim and Director General (Enforcement) Brigadier (Retd) Amir Shehzad. Representatives of the telecom companies travelled with the inspection teams, as did officials from the Ministry of IT and Telecommunications, and media representatives took part in the live testing. The exercise measured Quality of Experience and Quality of Service — in plain terms, how a network actually behaves for an ordinary user making a call or loading a page, judged against the standards in the Cellular Mobile Network Quality of Service Regulations, 2021.
What the survey found
Jazz finished first across the board: the fastest network speeds, the most consistent voice calls and the best overall mobile data quality in the twin cities. PTA described the initial results as excellent, reflecting improvements in the quality and reliability of telecom services across the surveyed areas. But the regulator was careful not to hand out a clean bill of health. While call and data services were generally satisfactory in most of the areas inspected, the teams also found genuine weak spots — places where call quality and internet service fell short. Those gaps are now on PTA’s list, and the operators are expected to fix them. The message for users is balanced: Jazz looks like the safer pick on the twin cities’ main roads, but no network is perfect everywhere, and the survey’s real value is the list of places that still need work.
A familiar result for Jazz in 2026
Thursday’s result fits a pattern that has held all year. In PTA’s Independent QoS Survey for the first quarter of 2026, Jazz was Pakistan’s best-performing mobile network overall, taking the highest ranking in 14 of the 18 cities surveyed and meeting 95 percent of the tested quality indicators. The second-quarter survey, covering 11 large cities, put Jazz first in ten of them — Quetta, Peshawar, Multan, Lahore, Islamabad, Sukkur, Hub, Abbottabad, Faisalabad and Rawalpindi — and the operator passed 130 of 132 quality checks. PTA credits Jazz’s showing to a combination of additional spectrum, network modernisation and faster 5G deployment. One caution from the regulator’s own reporting is worth remembering: voice quality does not always move in the same direction as data speed, so a network can be the fastest for downloads while still dropping the occasional call.
What it means for mobile users in the twin cities
For people who live and work in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, the survey is a practical guide. If fast mobile data or a reliable voice call on the city’s main roads is the priority, Jazz currently has the official evidence on its side. The wider picture is that PTA is watching the networks more closely than it has in years. The 5 November exercise followed a shorter field survey on Saturday 31 October, and between 22 and 28 October the regulator inspected 184 mobile sites, taking its cumulative count of monitored sites past 900. More surveys in more cities are expected before the end of the year. That scrutiny matters because the regulator’s quarterly surveys have also exposed real shortcomings: the second-quarter assessment found operators failing several prescribed benchmarks, with mobile broadband the biggest area of concern. The twin-cities exercise shows the direction of travel is positive — but the weak spots PTA found on Thursday are a reminder that the job is not finished.
PTA has not published a full city-by-city report for the 5 November exercise, and the findings so far are the regulator’s initial results. The test now is whether the weak spots identified on Islamabad and Rawalpindi’s roads are fixed before the next round of surveys — and whether the other operators can close the gap on Jazz.
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