GP users suffer in northern districts
Grameenphone customers in nine border districts in the north have been facing frequent call drops for the last two years due to cross-border interference by radio communication equipment in India, according to the operator and the telecom regulator.
A team of experts from the regulator and the operator visited the affected areas in December last year and identified an antenna apparently used by India's security forces in Siliguri as a probable cause of the interference.
Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission raised the issue at a meeting with Indian High Commissioner Harsh Vardhan Shringla in Dhaka yesterday.
Bangladesh will send an expert team to India by June after further discussions with the Indian High Commission in Dhaka, Shahjahan Mahmood, chairman of BTRC, told The Daily Star.
It is necessary to discuss the issue at the national level, BTRC wrote in a letter to the telecom division earlier.
For its part, the telecom division has written to the foreign ministry, urging it to open talks with India.
Users, especially of 3G services, suffer due to the interference, Mahmood said. “It is also the regulator's responsibility.”
The nine districts where service disruptions were reported are: Rangpur, Kurigram, Nilphamari, Gaibandha, Panchagarh, Thakurgaon, Dinajpur, Lalmonirhat and Naogaon. The BTRC letter said: “As a consequence of interference in that carrier (Grameenphone), subscribers in those areas are not only experiencing high call drops and low data speed but also are unable to make calls.”
After analysing the interference patterns, it is evident that the suspected source seems to be close to Siliguri of India, it said.
The Indian envoy said if they get any official complaint, they will send it to the proper authority, according to an official who was present at the meeting.
Not only Grameenphone users, some Airtel subscribers have recently started facing the similar problems in Comilla border region as some Indian mobile operators are upgrading their networks in Assam.
Senior officials of Grameenphone and Airtel were present at the meeting with the Indian envoy.
“We want to resolve the issue as early as possible,” said Mahmood. “This is not a new issue; operators face these types of problems across the world and discussion is the only way to sort these out.”
Grameenphone, which is the market leader in Bangladesh, said it has been facing severe interference in the 2100MHz band of the 3G spectrum in the affected districts since early 2014.
“We have been unable to utilise the true potential of the highly priced spectrum and customers are being deprived of the quality offered by Grameenphone's dual carrier 3G services,” said Mahmud Hossain, chief corporate affairs officer of GP.
“We are working closely with the BTRC and the ministry to find a solution to the problem.”
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