Call drop 222cr minutes recorded; GP contributes 103cr minutes

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DHAKA, Oct 22, 2018 (BSS) – Bangladesh has registered a total of 222 crore minutes of call drop in a year where market leader Grameenphone has contributed the majority stake with 103.43 crore minute, according to the telecom regulator.

Besides, Robi and Banglalink positioned as second and third with the stake of 76.18 crore minutes and 36.54 crore minutes respectively. Although, the state-owned operator Teletalk has contributed 6 crore minutes but it has no payable minutes.

But, the mobile operators are reluctant to pay back the call minutes as compensation against this massive call drops.

During the one year- September last year to September this year- they have paid back only 32 percent of the payable minutes.

The regulator –Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) on Monday published a report on call drop against the back drop of commerce minister Tofail Ahmed’s dissatisfaction on the call drop of the market leader Grameenphone in the parliament.

Earlier, the telecom minister Mustafa Jabbar also expressed his dissatisfaction over Grameenphone’s service quality and call drop issue.

The report showed the country in last 13 months witnessed a total 222.15 crore times call drop where 69.38 crore minute was payable as compensation.

However, against this volume top three operators only have given back 22.06 crore minute to their customers as compensation.

According to the regulation if any customer faced more than two drops in a day the customer will receive compensation from the third drop and for each case they will get one minute back.

The telecom regulator has introduced the compensation system in 2016 despite facing huge call drops in different parts of the country irrespective of operators.

BTRC prepared this report based on the operators’ information, and they have no individual mechanism to verify the numbers that operators submit to them.

In recent times mobile phone users are facing severe call drops and overall service quality has decorated tremendously.

However, the telecom regulator’s report also mentions that the call drop situation has improved in September compared with the same period of last year.

In September last year total call drop was 21.21 crore while it came down to 18.02 crore in September this year, reads the report.

Meanwhile the telecom regulator on Monday also issued a letter to all the mobile operators and asked them to submit a report on the customers’ complaints regarding call drop within five working.

The letter also acknowledge that customers complaints about call drop have also been increasing consistently and the issue has been discussed in the parliament, reads the letter signed by Golam Razzaque, director of engineering and operations division at BTRC.