Kabul residents complain about patchy, expensive internet

KABUL (Pajhwok): Residents of capital Kabul complain of patchy and expensive internet service, while the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology (MoTIT) announces the creation of a technical team to solve this problem.

Pajhwok Afghan News interviewed Kabul citizens in different areas about the internet on their mobile phones and they say although telecom companies have repeatedly announced they would reduce the internet price, it is yet to happen. The residents said sometimes the internet did not work at all in some areas and the speed was very slow.

Citizens: MoTIT should solve our problems

Hassan, a Kabul resident who used Salam SIM card, said: “The Internet is not working properly. The telecom companies are looting their customers with both hands and in return provide low quality service, the internet speed is very slow, it we want to play a video, we have to wait for hours until the video is loaded.”

Farzana, another resident, said the internet price was high compared to neighboring countries and people could not afford it.

Shabana, who uses the Etisalat services, said telecom firms had lowered the internet speed and this had caused problems in their daily work.

Nabila, a student of Ghalib Private University, held similar complaint, said: “I always use Etisalat, this month I added 550 afghanis balance and activated 4GB internet. I received a message that your internet is activated, it consumed my credit but I received no internet and it is an obvious theft.”

MoTIT

InayatullahAlkozai, MoTIT spokesman, about citizens’ complaints said their technical teams were striving to identify such areas and improve their internet quality.

He said he had shared the issue with the monitoring and evaluation team to investigate people’s complaints about internet and credit card theft by telecom firms.

sa/ma