2017 to be more eventful for telecom
The year 2017 looks set to be a milestone year for the telecom sector with the planned launch of the country's first communication satellite and the rollout of fourth generation mobile services.
The immediate past year was no less eventful. The year saw the landmark merger of Robi and Airtel, completion of biometric re-registration of SIMs and the legal tussles with Citycell, the country's oldest operator.
The six operators re-registered a total of 10.85 crore SIMs until the deadline of May 31, and at the stroke of midnight blocked about 2.5 crore unverified SIMs.
The long-drawn-out merger of Robi and Airtel was completed in November to create the country's second biggest mobile operator. The merger fee was Tk 100 crore and the spectrum charge came to about Tk 348 crore.
The telecom regulator shut down the country's oldest mobile phone operator, Citycell, on October 21 last year for failure to clear dues of Tk 477.69 crore.
After partial payment and an order from the Supreme Court the company was allowed to operate again but found no customers. The year also saw market leader Grameenphone be slapped with a fine of Tk 30 crore for providing unauthorised services.
Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission's Chairman Shahjahan Mahmood expressed his deep satisfaction over the industry's performance in 2016 and expects the New Year to be just as good, if not better. Customers will get new services in 2017 that will help the industry to mature, he added.
Abu Saeed Khan, senior policy fellow at LIRNEasia, a think-tank, differed: he said 2016 was a sensitive year for the telecom industry.
“We found a crisis in leadership. It was the main challenge,” said Khan, a former secretary general of the Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh.
However, he expects the challenge will be overcome this year.
Connection with the second submarine cable will be the first big milestone for the country; the government has set the target of February to do so.
Customers will also enjoy the long overdue service of mobile number portability in 2017. The auction to award the licence for the service was previously scheduled for September last year; it did not take place as the bidders did not get the security clearance.
“We are amending the guideline for MNP service and will send it to the government at the earliest,” Mahmood said.
Voicemail service will be rolled out shortly too, and the telecom regulator also plans to give a go-ahead to 4G services this year. The BTRC initially plans to allow 4G services in the 700 and 2100 bands and allow technological neutrality as well, he said.
The telecom regulator is also in the process of importing equipment to measure the quality of service offered by the mobile operators. From this year, BTRC will evaluate the service quality on a regular basis and publish the ranking.
“Previously we depended on the operators' report and they always painted a satisfactory picture. But soon, we will be capable of finding the true scenario,” Mahmood said.
Bangladesh also started exporting bandwidth to India in 2016.
The country met with a setback in the form of global ICT Development Index, where it slipped down two notches to 14 out of 175 countries.
The government also took the initiative to digitise other sectors of the economy and allocated more than Tk 8,300 crore in fiscal 2016-17 for the purpose.