BTRC receives 7,561 complaints
Public hearing to be held today
The telecom regulator received a total of 7,561 complaints in the last six months, 28.92 percent of which were for unsatisfactory service quality.
Between the months of May and October, Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission received 2,187 complaints from subscribers only about the quality of service of the five mobile operators.
In this backdrop, the regulator is set to hold a public hearing today at the Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh for the first time, in an effort to improve the services of the operators with the customer feedback.
Mobile operators opposed the initiative, calling it an exercise of the BTRC to harass them.
Some 420 dissatisfied customers were invited to attend the hearing out of the 1,050 who signed up for it. "Most of the customers' complaints are the same, so we invited a select number of users," said an official who is related with the issue.
In the two-hour session, which will be attended by representatives of the operators and the BTRC, customers can share their experiences and opinions on call drops, voice calls as well as internet packages and prices.
BTRC officials said most of the user complaints were about call drop, poor network coverage, call generation failure and duration of the various data packages and their prices.
They, however, said the number of complaints the users lodge with the mobile companies is much higher than the allegations received by the regulator.
Although the commission asked the mobile phone companies several times to compensate for call drops, they disregarded the order with a claim that their call drop rate was lower than the BTRC benchmark.
The BTRC's approved allowable call drop limit is 2 to 3 percent.
In July this year, the mobile operators agreed to provide call drop compensation within their own network following BTRC's pressure, but only one is providing the facility as a promotional offer.
In a directive in August, the BTRC said that in the promotion of packages the mobile operators have to describe the offer and terms and condition with equal importance. The data also showed an increasing trend of cyber crimes, mostly related to Facebook: in the last six months the BTRC received more than 1,103 complaints on cyber crimes.