BTRC lifts minimum speed limit for 4G

The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission will not enforce a precondition that instructed mobile phone operators to ensure a minimum 20 megabytes per second download speed while scrutinising their 4G licence applications.

The minimum speed issue will be kept in a "quality of service (QoS) directive" for telecommunication service providers and the figure will be updated from time to time.

"The directive will be on the table within a short time," Shahjahan Mahmood, chairman of the telecom regulator, told The Daily Star.

Now 20mbps seems high but time will come when customers will get faster speed, he said. "In the QoS directive, we will set a standard speed and if operators fail to ensure it, they will face tough action," he added.

The BTRC on Sunday received five licence applications, including from state-run Teletalk and now out-of-service Citycell. The private entities are scheduled to sit in a spectrum auction on February 13.

The regulator has formed two separate committees to evaluate the applications for licences and spectrum auction. The names of those qualifying will be published on January 25 and a mock auction will take place on February 12.

The BTRC expects mobile internet users, especially in cities, to enjoy super-fast data service by March as all the operators are set to roll out the 4G service.

The minimum speed was initially set at 1 gigabyte per second and later brought down to 100mbps. It however settled at 20mbps when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina last November approved the 4G guideline containing the licence prerequisites.

For 3G, mobile operators enjoyed a minimum speed regulation of 512 kilobytes per second whereas the global average was 4.4mbps.

Mobile operators praised the BTRC for overlooking the prerequisite, saying all such conditions need to be fixed taking ground realities into consideration.

"Download speed is only a component of some other parameters of the quality of service and we are promising customers that they will get higher speed in 4G than 3G," said Mahmud Hossain, chief corporate affairs officer of Grameenphone.

There should be a realistic QoS directive where the BTRC will ensure customer benefits and at the same time address technical challenges, he said.

Another top official of a mobile operator said technically it was not possible to ensure 20mbps in every geographical location in the country, even if a single operator acquires all the spectrums the BTRC is set to auction off.

"We want a realistic proposition about the 4G directive, as there are some other issues in it and the operators are not comfortable about them," said the official.

The operators raised the issues with the BTRC to have them resolved. One concerns value added tax (VAT).

The BTRC collected VAT from the operators on different occasions in the past but could not give acknowledgement receipts as the National Board of Revenue had not authorised it to do so.

The government has fixed 15 percent VAT for 4G spectrum charge and licence fees. For 3G, it was 5 percent.

If the money collected is not recorded as VAT, rebates can't be claimed, said a senior executive of a mobile operator seeking not to be named. 

"It will increase our costs by 15 percent. We need to resolve the issue before moving to 4G," added the executive.

Mahmood said the BTRC was very serious on the long pending issue. "Within a short time we will sit with the attorney general's office to find a solution."