Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) is expecting to hold a meeting with the mobile phone operators of the country for fixing mobile internet bandwidth price, especially for mini-packs, to protect end users.
Sources said, the telecom watchdog compared different packages from the operators and has primarily decided to fix the price for every 100 Megabytes (MB) of data below Tk20, for both 2G and 3G subscribers. At the same time, it wants to reduce the number of packages offered.
Mobile phone operators, however, were not interested about such a regulation, and were worried that they might post losses.
“We have just introduced the third generation (3G), which needs sometime to mature the services and the data market also,” a senior executive of a mobile operator told the Dhaka Tribune.
He said: “As it is a huge investment venture, the regulator should have declared their aspirations before the 3G spectrum auction. Then we could have thought it out.”
But the commission said it wanted to regulate the price for the betterment of the industry and it was a continuous process.
“We are trying to do something new for the betterment of the industry. I think it will help our industry to become more mature,” Md Giashuddin Ahmed, vice-chairman of the BTRC told the Dhaka Tribune.
He said BTRC would not do anything without consulting the industry.
“We are trying to introduce the same thing what we had for voice and SMS tariff regulation earlier,” he said.
Earlier, BTRC had fixed the threshold for call tariff between Tk0.25 and Tk2 per minute in 2008. It had also revised off-net call charges (termination to other network) at less than Tk0.60.
In 2011, BTRC had fixed the local SMS tariff at maximum Tk0.50 and for international operators Tk2 only. It also introduced 10 second pulse for any calls last year, a decision operators opposed at that time.
The telecom regulator scheduled a meeting regarding internet bandwidth pricing on November 27, then rescheduled it to December 2, but, it would change the date again because of consecutive blockades.
“Operators are not interested in attending the meeting during hartal and blockades, so the decision has to wait,” a BTRC high-up told the Dhaka Tribune.
Currently, market leader, Grameenphone on its 3G network is offering 500MB of data for only Tk50 with a 512Kbps (kilobits per second) bandwidth, with a validity period of just five days.
Meanwhile, Banglalink offers 50MB of data for Tk50 with 1Mbps bandwidth, with a validity of 15 days.
In comparison, Robi offers 200MB of data for Tk100 at 512Kbps for seven days only.
However, the pricing of 3G internet packages has much been criticised, with several ICT-based organisations staging protests, human chains, a sit-in in front of the BTRC headquarters.
Julius Chowdhury, one of the coordinators of these protests, recently told the Dhaka Tribune: “Internet price is a bar towards making Bangladesh a digital nation. We had earlier arranged movements, and BTRC promised us that it would take steps to for its regulation. I hope it will finally happen.”
Meanwhile, BTRC sources said different operators have dozens of packages for their internet services, which the regulator wants to cut down.