State minister for posts and telecommunications Tarana Halim has called a meeting with the CEOs of mobile operators at her Secretariat office today at 3pm to discuss why subscribers are not given compensation for call drops. Officials of the Post and Telecommunications Division have said this has happened because of the callousness of the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC). BTRC chairman Dr Shahjahan Mahmood said they had received a written order from the P&T Division about call drops. “We won’t compromise with the mobile operators on this issue,” he said. Earlier, the country’s telecom regulatory body decided to issue a directive to the mobile phone operators to give compensations to subscribers for dropped calls from January 1, 2017. The decision was taken in the 201st meeting of BTRC, Mahmood told The Independent. “We’ll issue a written directive to the mobile operators to implement the compensation from January 1, 2017,” he added.
Earlier, on November 30 last year, Tarana Halim had told The Independent that call drop compensation must be given from January 1, 2017. The state minister said subscribers would receive compensation for unexpected call drops from telecom operators starting from January 1. “This time the BTRC will ensure that the operators pay for unexpected call drops,” Tarana added. She also said the mobile phone operators must inform their subscribers about the compensation, in case of more than one call drop, through SMS. “The mobile phone operators have to inform their subscribers about the compensation through SMS. If the subscribers are not informed, they would think that they are not getting the compensation,” she said. According to the BTRC, of the five, only one operator has compensated for call drops in August. Under the circumstances, BTRC has been directed to take necessary action against the operators that are not paying compensation.