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The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission on Sunday slapped two conditions on leading mobile phone operator Grameenphone as part of the implementation of its Significant Market Power Regulations, 2018.
BTRC vice-chairman Subrata Roy Maitra told New Age that the commission issued a letter to the mobile operator, imposing the two SMP conditions on it.
One condition will allow customers to migrate again to any other operators after 60 days of migrating to Grameenphone from any other operator — Robi, Banglalink and Teletalk — under the mobile number portability service. The condition will come into effect on July 1 this year.
The migration timeframe for the other operators will remain unchanged at 90 days.
As per the second SMP condition, GP will have to take approval from the BTRC to launch any new package, service and offer, and to continue any of its existing packages after a certain period.
The telecom operator will have to take approval from the commission for new packages, services and offers from July 1. The operators will have to take approval from the commission by August 31 for the existing packages, services and offers.
Usually, the telecom operators can continue to run packages after the expiry of the initial approval period by just intimating the issues to the telecom regulator.
On February 10 last year, the telecom regulator declared Grameenphone as an SMP due to its market share of above 40 per cent under two criteria.
Under the SMP regulations, the telecom regulator on February 18 last year imposed four conditions on Grameenphone.
In March last year, the BTRC withdrew the four conditions amid court intervention, but proposed twenty conditions which could be imposed on the mobile phone operator under the SMP regulations.
On Sunday, the BTRC slapped the two conditions after a December 15 High Court order allowed the telecom regulator to slap conditions on GP under the SMP regulations upon following due procedure.
The commission, however, skipped imposing two other conditions that it had imposed last year, dissatisfying the three other telecom operators.
An official of the commission, however, told New Age that the commission would impose another SMP condition on GP soon.
Under the third SMP condition, the commission would lower GP’s call termination fee from Tk 0.1 so that the other operators could capitalise on the termination gap.
The BTRC official said that the commission had been going through a study to lower the call termination rate for GP.
Earlier, the commission intended to lower GP’s call termination rate to Tk 0.05.
The commission refrained from imposing floor price for GP’s customers at Tk 0.5 per minute considering the coronavirus situation, officials said.
In a statement, Grameenphone director and public and regulatory affairs head Hossain Sadat said, ‘The Bangladesh mobile telecom market is competitive and GP has grown through timely investment, innovations and operational efficiency.’
‘The latest impositions deviate from the objectives of the SMP regulations and are not based on evidence of market failure,’ he said, adding, ‘These asymmetric impositions are anti-competitive in nature, which we believe are not in the interest of consumers and will have adverse impact on the national exchequer and the investment climate.’
‘We are in the process of further evaluating the letter and our way forward,’ he said.
