Mobile operators to reimburse every call drop talk-time

Mobile phone users are going to receive the talk-time for every single call drop they experience from 1 October.

The validity of compensation talk-time has also been extended from 24 hours to 15 days, the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) disclosed in a press conference held at its office in the capital on Monday.

Brig Gen Md Nasim Parvez, director general (Systems and Services Division) of BTRC, said mobile subscribers will get 30 seconds for the first and second call drops and 40 seconds for the third to seventh call drops in compensation.

At present, Grameenphone and Robi are giving back talk-time to users from third to seventh call drops in a day while Banglalink provides from second to sixth call drops, he said.

At the same time, there is no provision for using Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) for the customers to know about daily, weekly and monthly call drop compensation talk-time amounts, said Nasim Parvez.

Presenting the on-net call drop number for May 2022, he said Grameenphone had 39.66 lakh call-drops and it returned talk-time of only 14.50 lakh – which is just 36.58% of the total call drops.

Robi saw 33.14 lakh call drops and it returned 21.84 lakh talk-time, 65.91% of the total call drops.

Banglalink, however, returned 101.49% talk-time to users against its total 7.15 lakh call drops, the BTRC DG said.

Currently, subscribers do not have the opportunity to verify their call-drop and SMS, resulting in immense dissatisfaction among them.

But now a customer will be able to know their total call drops talk-time amount by dialling USSD code *121*765#, Nasim Parvez added.

BTRC Chairman Shyam Sunder Sikder, chaired the program while Posts and Telecommunications Minister Mustafa Jabbar attended the program as chief guest.

Mustafa Jabbar said, "No operators will get away without paying compensation for quality of service. To provide the service, they should ensure the quality first."

He also said that BTRC will bring the mobile data service under similar monitoring soon.

Among others, Posts and Telecommunications Secretary Md Khalilur Rahman, BTRC Vice-Chairman Subrata Roy Maitra, Commissioner Engr Md Mohiuddin Ahmed and Director General (Engineering and Operations Division) Brig Gen Md Ehsanul Kabir spoke at the program moderated by BTRC Secretary (Deputy secretary) Md Nurul Hafiz.