Eid, Public Complaints and Phone Companies

Now that a week has passed since Eid, we can look back and see if this Eid was any different from the perspective of telecom traffic and service quality. If you go through the news, it would seem as if Eid is an event when the divide between public and the phone companies becomes more obvious and open. For example this piece from Daily Times is very critical of the mobile phone operators. I wonder if the situation on the ground was this bad and if so, are there good metrics available about this?  To be fair, I think that the Public Relations departments of these companies should issue clear statements and engage the public about their point of view as well.

Majority of the customers reported that they had to made several attempts for calls particularly during Chand Raat to Eid Day because of the jammed network. The customers suffered unavailability of connectivity for domestic and internationals calls on Eid Day. Besides, cellular phone call packages after midnights were reported jammed and interrupted during Eid days.
Telecom analysts said that the network controls calls traffic run smoothly in normal days but they are overloaded during Eid as millions of customers make calls simultaneously. They added the flow of calls and SMS depends on the capacity and number of cellular sites, which varies in accordance with the density of their customers in particular areas. There are more than 95.54 million subscribers of various cellular phone companies registered in the country out of which more or less 60 million are estimated as active users. For coverage, there are more than 26,300 cellular sites of all five operators functioning in different metropolis, small cities and villages in the country.
Customers also reported that the balance upload service were not available on the retail outlets as the request failed to transfer and share balance among customers. Therefore, they had to buy scratch cards, which are comparatively costly for them.

On the topic of blocking certain packages, it quoted PTA officials as.

Millions of customers were deprived of greeting through lowest rates Short Messaging Services (SMS) as some operators has suspend their bundles package temporary from Chand Rat to Eid' third day. They said that the operators suspension of the deals may be a violation of the regulations' prescribed by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) but their reputation were badly hurt in a highly competitive market.
PTA's Telecom Consumer Protection Regulations, 2009, said operators may withdraw the provision of any service to consumers, provided such withdrawal is approved by the authority and thirty days prior notices is given to consumers. Operator shall clearly communicate the reasons for suspension/disconnection to the consumer along with the action required on the part of that consumer to avoid such suspension/disconnection, it further added. PTA, when contacted, said that it would review all these issues in order to chalk out strategies for the facilitation of the customers in the future.
About suspension of services, PTA will probe into matter and penalize the companies for violating the regulations, a high official said.