Tussle between mobile carriers, regulators: don’t make customers suffer
The ongoing tussle between mobile carriers and regulators has led to a significant decline in investment in the mobile industry. As this newspaper reported yesterday, the mobile industry's combined investment fell 19 percent year-on-year to Tk 3,695.72 crore in 2019, the lowest in recent years. Since a major portion of the investment of mobile operators goes into network expansion and building towers to improve coverage and service quality, as well as for upgrading and maintaining towers, the decline in investment has badly affected their service quality, and the end result is that customers are now getting substandard services.
Under a new licencing regime, only designated tower companies can set up mobile network infrastructure, and mobile operators are prohibited from getting into the business. However, as the tower companies are yet to be operational, mobile carriers have not been able to expand their network for some time now. This too has affected service quality. From the customer's perspective, this is extremely unfair. Why should they have to accept worse mobile phone services even though they have played no part in the issues troubling the industry?
It would be prudent if the two parties came to an agreement, which would spare the customers any further trouble. At the end of the day, the primary mandate of regulators is to ensure that customers get quality service in exchange for their payment. That is why the regulators should take the initiative in resolving the problems that are hampering investment and service quality.
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