Telecommunications State Minister Tarana Halim has warned all mobile operators of compensatory measures if they fail to improve their services by this December.
“Operators will have to fix the amount of compensation for call drop; they must also compensate for poor services as our aim is to ensure customer satisfaction,” Tarana told journalists after meeting the operators at the Secretariat.
At the meeting, however, mobile operators defended themselves, saying it was not them but the Interconnection Exchange (ICX) and International Gateway (IGW) operators and the Nation Wide Telecommunication Transmission Network (NTTN) were responsible for the quality of services.
Tarana said she would sit with the NTTN, IGW, ICX operators. She said Indian mobile operators compensate for call-drop and the same needed to be introduced in Bangladesh.
She told the meeting that operators cannot run any service under users’ accounts without their consent and auto-renewal of services would also not be tolerated.
Tarana also asked Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission to send its Value Added Services guidelines to her ministry so the government can complete the task soon.
The BTRC was also asked to submit a proposal on how to ensure the quality of services offered by the operators.
On call-dropping, the operators told the meeting that a lot of components were attached to their services and any of those could cause such disruptions.
Emdad ul Bari, director general of the BTRC, said they ran a study in 15 districts and found 78% people experience call-drops. The commission has not, however, produced any technical report yet. According to the International Telecommunication Union 3% call-drops are allowed.
Grameenphone Chief Executive Officer Rajeev Sethi said it was not possible for a wireless mobile communication service to bring call-drops to zero level.
Airtel CEO PD Sharma said they had already introduced one second pulse and if other operators did so, users would not experience over-billing.
