State Minister for Posts and Telecommunications Tarana Halim has given a six-month ultimatum to the managing director of Teletalk in order to achieve a visible development in its services.
The lone state-owned mobile operator has continued incurring loss every year since its inception in 2005.
“I have given him (Gias Uddin Ahmed, managing director of Teletalk) a six-month time frame to bring about a considerable change to its services in order for gaining customers’ confidence,” said Tarana Halim.
He has only five months left to prove his worth, she hinted.
Tarana Halim came up with the disclosure while speaking at a meeting with the newly elected leaders of Telecom Reporters’ Network of Bangladesh (TRNB), an organisation of telecom journalists, held at the secretariat yesterday.
“Teletalk is a brand mobile operator. Everyone aspires to become its subscribers, but due to lack of proper services we are losing people’s trust.”
Expressing her dissatisfaction over SIM re-registration, she said customer support centres of different mobile operators are not cooperating with their subscribers properly to register their SIMs.
Re-registration process is moving slow which is not expected as the operators will have to complete all the process by April this year, she said.
The government is going to take an initiative to stop illegally imported mobile handsets by launching a database system on February 6.
Once the system is introduced, the process of illegally imported mobile handsets must stop. After that the regulatory body will get tough against illegal handsets.
Posts and Telecommunications Secretary Faizur Rahman Chowdhury, TRNB President Rashed Mehedi, General Secretary Shamim Ahmed of the newly elected body members and general members of TRNB also spoke at the meeting.
The junior minister said once the government has introduced mobile handset database system on February 6, after a certain period, no one will get SIM connection through mobile operators.
Tarana invites people to lodge any complaints on telecommunication sector with her verified Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/TaranaHalimMP) to get solution to it.
“I have already started taking action after getting complaints on my Facebook page from subscribers’ end. Meantime, different problems have been solved based on those complaints and the move will continue.”
The junior minister said the telecom division has asked Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) to set up a separate cell to address public complaints.