Service Quality Standards
Telcos for relaxing of BTRC conditions
The mobile phone companies have demanded relaxing the standards of several service quality parameters set by the telecom regulator including the record keeping provision to three months from existing three years. The Association of Mobile Telephone Operators of Bangladesh on Tuesday sent a letter to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission saying some conditions for maintaining the standard were unrealistic and needed further review.
The BTRC on January 24 issued an interim directive on ‘Quality of Service for Mobile Operators’ that came following a recent trend of increasing call drop, poor network coverage and unsatisfactory customer care support.
According to the directive, the operators have to preserve all the records required to find the value achieved for all parameters for three years which the operators are differing.
The AMTOB said the mobile operators could only store the data for three months as their system could not support
more than that period.
According to the directive, the operators have to submit the monthly report for four different geographical areas — overall network, Dhaka and Chittagong metropolitan areas, all district and upazila headquarters and rest of the licensed areas including rail and river ways and all hospitals, universities, air and land ports
and cantonments — with original system generated files.
The AMTOB response, however, said the mobile companies agreed to do the drive test only in the metropolitan areas, all districts headquarters and national highways as the operators could not be able to provide the technical assistance for all the mentioned areas.
The operators also said they would be submitting the report in half-yearly basis rather than monthly basis.
The AMTOB also sought clarification about the electronic communication in customer support which the BTRC set at 20 seconds for response time when a customer asks for help from operators.
The BTRC directive also set call drop rate at 2 to 3 per cent, adding that different types of network congestion, which might disrupt the call, cannot be more than 3 per cent.
The telecom regulator will also publish a yearly ranking of the operators by analysing data from under customer survey, BTRC drive test and the self-reporting of the operators, said the BTRC directive.
The BTRC also asked the operators to disclose the reports to the customers, the format and time specification was not mentioned in the directive.
-With New Age input
