The Tele Consumers Association of Bangladesh on Tuesday sought initiatives from the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission to ensure stable mobile network, speedy internet and voice quality.
The TCAB in a letter to BTRC chairman Shyam Sunder Sikder said that poor network speed and network coverage in many buildings, running vehicles and in rural areas became a common problem.
In many cases, consumers are not getting even 2G mobile internet speed although operators are giving advertisements on 4G internet speed, the letter said.
‘Consumers are experiencing poor mobile network, slow speed of internet often, which is not consistent with the government’s policy of Digital Bangladesh,’ the TCAB letter said.
The letter signed by TCAB convener Murshidul Haque said that mobile operators in Bangladesh made an insignificant progress in improving the quality of network and internet in the past five years, but they were spending a huge amount of money on advertisements with pledges of quality services.
The BTRC should ensure that operators provide services to consumers as per the guidelines of the regulatory body, the letter said.
The TCAB claimed that consumers were not getting uninterrupted mobile internet services and not only the operators but also the BTRC were responsible for this.
In the era of information technology, the internet is not a luxury item rather it is essential to get access to knowledge, the association said.
Bangladesh ranked 128 among 138 countries in mobile internet speed in 2021.
Ookla, a global leader in mobile and broadband network intelligence testing applications and technology, in its Speedtest Global Index for May placed Bangladesh in the 134th position among 137 countries that the company tracks.
Three mobile phone operators — Grameenphone, Robi and Teletalk — failed to maintain 4G internet speed standards
terms of downloading speed in the Dhaka division, according to a BTRC test report published in March 2022.
Based on 1,062 samples of downloading speed, the leading mobile phone operator GP’s 4G downloading speed stood at 6.99Mbps, the report showed.
The second largest telecom operator Robi’s 4G downloading speed stood at 6.41Mbps based on 903 data samples.
State-owned Teletalk’s 4G internet speed was the poorest among all the telecom operators as it provided 4G download speed of 2.8Mbps to its customers.
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