Taskforce formed to deal with telecom complaints

The telecom regulator has formed a complaint management taskforce to mitigate users' grievances that have piled up in recent times amid the operators' continuous failure to provide quality services.

The taskforce will provide solutions to the complaints against the telecom services furnished by around 2,500 licence-holders of Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), the regulator said in a statement yesterday.

The commission will launch a new shortcode—100—today, replacing the existing—2872—one to make the process easier, it said.

The telecom watchdog introduced the four-digit shortcode last year and has received 3,522 complaints so far, all of them against mobile phone operators. The taskforce will handle only those complaints for which the operators fail to give any solution, BTRC said.

The regulator will try to find solutions to those complaints after having discussions with the operators and will also inform the customers about the outcomes, according to the statement.

Mobile phone was first launched in Bangladesh 20 years ago, but still the operators sometimes fail to meet the customers' expectation, a top official of the BTRC said.

To address the situation, the telecom regulator organised a public hearing in November 2016 to learn about users' concerns on mobile operators' service quality.

The BTRC earlier launched a dedicated mobile phone number and an email address to hear about complaints from users and solve them, but the efforts did not yield expected results.