Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission on Thursday set a standard rate for network-based discounts on call rates offered by the mobile phone companies to the subscribers.
The rate will be fixed on the availability of the base transceiver station or network tower where the operators will provide real-time pricing data to the subscribers, said a BTRC directive issued on the day.
The lowest on-net tariff for the new offer will be Tk 0.041666 per 10 seconds and for off-net it will be Tk 0.10, but the operators cannot charge more than Tk 0.3333 for 10 seconds in the offer, said the directive.
‘If the network is free the operators will offer low rate and if the network is busy the operators will charge more so that the subscribers don’t need to pay at a fixed rate,’ said a BTRC official.
He said the new directive is not mandatory for the operators to follow unless they have BTS-based dynamic pricing.
‘If the operators wish to go for dynamic pricing they will have to follow the format mentioned in the directive,’ he said.
According to the directive, the mobile operators will have to let the customers know the dynamic tariff for each region under a BTS and in no way the price can be announced in percentage.
If the use of a BTS goes to the next tariff level while a subscriber is using it in the previous rate then the operators cannot charge additional money for that, said the directive.
It also said mobile phone companies cannot charge any other fees except tax besides the given tariff margin and cannot launch the offer for any specific region.
The subscribers will opt-in or opt-out from the service through SMS which should be free of cost, it said.
The BTRC asked the mobile phone companies to submit commercial offer designs of the new package to the commission by August 1.
At present, Grameenphone offers BTS-based discounts to its subscribers under the My Zone package.
-With New Age input
