Low-grade service, how long do mobile operators avoid responsibility?

Complaints about substandard mobile internet service in Bangladesh are at length and this has become constant. Bangladesh has crossed the era of 4G step by step and now is on the verge of 5G technology; But the mobile telecommunication services failed to bring smiles to the faces of the customers! Call drops in voice calls and slow speed of the Internet or excessive disconnection and connection (fluctuation) are a constant fact in mobile operators' services in the country!

Mobile operators must take the issue of customer satisfaction very seriously as they are business entities. Customer satisfaction is the key to business profitability; But if the customer does not have a suitable remedy or can be satisfied with any trick, then any business organization can resort to that trick! This very picture has been seen over the years in terms of mobile operators' services in Bangladesh.

According to the information provided by the mobile operators, they currently have network coverage in 99 percent of areas in the country. As per the latest data published by the BTRC, the current number of subscribers of four mobile operators is over 17.86 crore. Of them, 12.69 crore use mobile internet. Apart from this, the number of subscribers of broadband internet services provided by ISP companies is over 1.35 crore. If you look at the numbers with open eyes, the number of customers of ISP companies seems negligible compared to the four mobile operators! BTRC (Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission) publishes data on subscriber numbers; But the website does not give statistics on how much bandwidth is being used by these 12 crore internet users. But, if the statistics are given, the equation of the hoax would be easy to understand.

Let's try to understand the equation. According to the information received from the authorities concerned, about 6,000 Gbps of internet bandwidth is currently being used in Bangladesh every day. Among them, 12.70 crore customers of mobile operators are using 1,650 Gbps while 1.35 crore of broadband internet service provided by ISP companies are using 4,350 Gbps. Thus, even with 12 crore subscribers, the share of mobile operators in the Internet service is only 27 percent while the share of ISPs with 1.35 crore customers is 72.5 percent. Therefore, it is clear that ISP companies which were established with full domestic investment are the stakeholders of three-fourths of the Internet in Bangladesh. The interesting thing is complaints about broadband services are negligible compared to the complaints about mobile internet services.

The question may arise in your mind why the amount of bandwidth usage is so high in the case of an ISP with very few subscribers? The answer lies with you. When you are at home, you connect your smartphone, desktop, or laptop to a router and stay on the WiFi network. An ISP is providing your connection to this network. If you have five family members in your house, all of them are connected to that WiFi network. After you leave home and go to your workplace, you connect yourself to a WiFi network again. During the traffic in the middle of the road, you may turn on the Internet on the mobile network! Apart from that, you spend almost three-fourths of the day on a broadband internet connection.

Now calculate if you have five members in your family, five people use that internet connection from one wifi router. Now if you multiply 1.35 crore customers by 5 (five) the result is 6.75 crore. So, the actual number of ISP subscribers as household connections is 6.75 crore. Again suppose you have 20 colleagues in your office. If they are all connected to the WiFi network through an ISP connection, the number of ISP subscribers would exceed 20 crore.

The number of customers is not a big deal. The big thing is that the ISP companies are allowing you to use unlimited internet at a very low cost. That is why you are completely free to use the Internet on the ISP network, you are not bound by the illusion of a specific data volume or period. So we can easily say that our freedom to use the Internet would increase further if the expansion of broadband connections provided by locally established companies are encouraged from the state level.

I may add that all mobile operators and ISP companies are the customers of the transmission service provider companies (NTTN operators) with domestic investment. As a result, all customers of mobile and ISP companies are also customers of NTTN operators. So it can also be said that the locally established companies are the biggest stakeholders in telecommunication services in Bangladesh. However, their contribution is not immediately revealed in front of our eyes due to the extensive advertising flash of companies with foreign investment! Although domestic companies are major players in service management, they are very insignificant compared to foreign investment operators in terms of profit.

An important question is, why the quality of mobile telecommunication services is not satisfactory? In response to this, mobile operators make the same complaint over and over again. That is, they have to rely on a few independent licensees who know the value of telecommunication services in Bangladesh. This dependency is causing the problem. They mainly blame NTTN (National Telecom Transmission Network), ICX (Interconnection Exchange), and IIG (International Internet Gateway) organizations. Let's see now, how reasonable are the complaints of mobile operators?

Any service operator is always dependent on multiple second and third-party organizations. For example, Sohag Transport or Green Line Bus Paribahan are the service operators in our transport services. Now these bus service operators buy buses from automobile manufacturers like Hino, Volvo, or Hyundai. Roads are constructed by the roads and highways department of the government or in some cases by other competent authorities for the plying of these buses. This construction work is done by several large private contractors. The bus service operators earn by running those buses on the road and providing passenger services. The bus operator mainly strives to ensure a comfortable journey in the bus to achieve passenger satisfaction. If they make a good profit, they buy new buses and diversify their service category. Now if Sohag or Green Line Transport demand that since they provide passenger services, they should be given the contracts for bus construction and road construction! They warn that if their demands are not met, they will not repair the old parts, buy new buses, take the necessary fuel, and ply the vehicle slowly on the roads! Suppose the service quality of the bus operator is going down, the seats are torn, the buses don't leave on time and passengers are being taken more than the capacity. Whenever you raise a question about the quality of passenger service, the bus operator keeps saying, "I can't build the road, bro, how can I change the torn seat cover of the bus and put a new one?" This argument must seem ridiculous to you.

The response of mobile operators to complaints about quality of service is also very similar. A mobile operator is a service operator just like a bus operator. Similarly, individuals buy network equipment from companies, buy bandwidth, and use transmission networks to transport bandwidth. This transmission network is the highway of telecommunication services. The telecommunication regulatory policy of Bangladesh has given separate licenses to operators, equipment providers, bandwidth providers and transmission service providers and defined their scope of work.

As there is a 99 percent mobile network across the country, almost the same amount of optical fiber network has been ensured by the NTTN operators. As a result there is no crisis of mobile operators in getting optical fiber transmission services; But still, only 30 percent of mobile operators' BTCS or sites were connected to fiber networks by 2020. Still, this merger is not more than 50 percent in the case of the other three operators except Teletalk. The main reason behind this is the competition for business space. From the beginning, three foreign investment companies in Bangladesh were proceeding to establish 360-degree business control; But during the rule of the caretaker government in 2008, the BTRC brought transmission and bandwidth provision in the telecom sector under separate licenses through the ILDTS policy, the efforts of mobile operators were thwarted. In particular, they were denied the opportunity to continue the mobile connectivity service along with transmission and broadband internet businesses. Rather, domestic entrepreneurs are emerging in the broadband internet services business. Since then, in response to any question regarding quality of service, mobile operators have been citing their lack of sole control over transmission and bandwidth supply in the form of complaints or excuses.

Bangladesh is facing no shortage of bandwidth supply now. Two submarine cables and six ITC companies are providing enough bandwidth to keep up with demand. There are optical fiber connections all over the country. Then why the proper quality of mobile internet service is not being ensured? How much of the airwaves allotted to mobile operators by the BTRC in 2021 has been rolled out (dedicated for use in the network) so far? Bandwidth and transmission service prices have steadily declined over the years. So why the price of mobile internet packages has not gone down? All this needs to go through a thorough technical investigation. Despite all the capabilities, a poor condition in any mobile telecommunication service cannot be resolved unless its proper cause is identified.

Domestic ISPs have accepted one country one rate fixed by the authorities without looking at the business side. But the mobile operators could not come out of complex number packages. Broadband service has unlimited internet access; But when the three-day package, criticized as an easy way to cheat customers on mobile internet services, was discontinued, operators lamented business closures, prompting authorities to relaunch the package.

There may be complaints about uninterrupted and smooth service delivery in the value chain. For example, the bus operators while driving on the road saw that the road was broken or impassable. Then that bus operator will not invest and build the road himself. Rather, he will give a demand letter for road repair to the organization in charge of road maintenance. If there is a problem with any of the services in the value chain that mobile operators depend on, it should be brought up specifically and called for prompt resolution; But rather than trying to capture the entire business of the value chain and failing to succeed, use that failure as a constraint to improve service quality is unethical. How long would the operators avoid responsibility for poor quality of service?

We have to remember that shortly the fast nature of the advancement of technology will make uninterrupted and high-speed internet essential. As a result, the regulatory body should take effective measures to stop the unhealthy competition to establish business control among the operators of the value chain of the country's telecommunication sector and should create a healthy business competition environment. Proper quality of customer service will also be ensured when a healthy business competition environment is developed.

Rased Mehedi: Telecom and IT sector analyst.