The government plans to carry out the maintenance of mobile phone base stations (BTS) through a couple of separate companies that might cost as many as 2,500 engineers their jobs in the industry. The move goes against the 3G licencing regulations.
In accordance with the regulation, only the operators shall be responsible for establishing, building, managing and maintaining the towers.
However, Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) plans to introduce new companies for the tower management.
The regulatory authority has planned to award licences to at least two companies to manage around 29,000 BTS.
At present more than 2,500 employees, mostly from engineering background, are working for BTS maintenance.
If the BTRC imposes the tower management guidelines, the engineers would risk losing their jobs, an industry insider said.
He also called into question the ability of new companies to be tasked with providing the maintenance services.
According to an official of the telecom watchdog, if the tower management guidelines get the go-ahead from the Ministry of Telecommunications, licencing companies will start working by the end of the year.
Now, all the mobile operators are maintaining their towers separately on their own.
Operator sources said as of now six mobile operators have around 3,000 engineers. Of them, some 700 engineers are working for GP, 600 for Banglalink, 500 for Robi and 1,000 for Teletalk, Citycell and Airtel.
“If BTRC finally gets the approval, we will probably lose our jobs. We are observing the situation very closely, and spending time amid uncertainty,” an engineer of a leading mobile operator said, requesting anonymity.
Another engineer of a large mobile industry told the Dhaka Tribune that they have already talked about tower management guidelines with their senior officials who assured them to not be worried about it.
When asked about it, a top official of a mobile operator said, seeking anonymity, if the guidelines are approved, all mobile operators will lose their control over the towers.
“In that case, we will try to find a way to keep them still employed in the organisation at any cost.”
In the meantime, Robi launched a separate company named edotco to manage BTS, but it has already been shut down following a directive from BTRC last March.
The directive says any company shall not be involved in the tower sharing business.
If found involved, the regulatory authority will impose a fine of Tk300 crore as violation of the directive, according to the notice.
On the other hand, operators had already been sharing their towers among themselves under the network sharing guidelines introduced in 2010.
Since 2010, around 7,500 towers were set up by six operators, of which 5,500 have already been shared.
BTRC Chairman Sunil Kanti Bose and Secretary Sarwar Alam were not available for comments as both are currently out of the country.
