Quality telecom services still a far cry: survey

Star Business Report from Bangladesh 

Bangladesh has met half the targets for ensuring quality services for mobile subscribers, according to a survey of the South Asian Telecommunication Regulators' Council (SATRC).

The survey categorised the overall consumer protection of the telecom industry in five broad sections and Bangladesh got full points for billing accurac.

The four other measurements were: complaint redressal, quality of service, unsolicited calls and mobile number portability. The survey report was unveiled yesterday at the 17th SATRC summit in Dhaka.

The telecom regulators of nine countries took part in the three-day summit that ends today to discuss the overall situation of the telecom industry in the region. Bhavana Sharma, an adviser to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, presented the report.

The report showed that Bangladesh failed to perform well in basic parameters like audit of the quality of services, survey on customer satisfaction and generating point of interconnection congestion report.

The country scored satisfactorily in the field of quality of service standards, network outage and generating performance monitoring reports.

Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission launched a survey on quality of service, including technical analysis and customer satisfaction, in 100 areas of the country in August 2015. But the report is yet to be finalised.

In all three parameters of billing accuracy, Bangladesh along with India has scored satisfactorily, while Afghanistan and Bhutan have failed, according to the SATRC survey.  Bangladesh also scored satisfactorily in four parameters out of six of complaints redressal and failed in two, while India was the top scorer in the category.

The BTRC recently launched a complaint centre for subscribers but the number is not toll free, even at the operator's level, as per the SATRC standards.

In unsolicited call prevention, Bangladesh could comply with only one parameter but failed in all others like telemarketers' registry, separate number scheme for telemarketers and toll free number to complain against unsolicited calls. Bangladesh also failed in all four parameters of mobile number portability services, as the country has recently indefinitely suspended the auction to appoint a company to launch the services, while India and Pakistan have already introduced MNP.

Of all the parameters, Bangladesh has achieved 14 points and failed to perform well in 10 parameters.

Bangladesh has complied with 14 parameters out of 24 mentioned in the SATRC report, said Shahjahan Mahmood, chairman of BTRC.

“So we are in a good shape already. I hope that by next year, we will comply with the remaining 10 parameters of customer protection,” he told The Daily Star after the launch of the report.

Another senior official of BTRC said they could have complied with more parameters if the amendment to the telecom act in 2010 did not make it mandatory for them to take approval from the telecom ministry for any policy decision.