Formulating guidelines for such campaigns
The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has initiated a move to formulate guidelines for recharge-based promotional campaigns of the mobile phone companies operating in the country, said officials. The mobile phone companies often offer bonus on mobile talk-time recharge and such offers are not properly regulated, they said.‘So there are numerous recharge-based offers by the mobile operators which confuse subscribers,’ a senior BTRC official told New Age.
Such offers also push subscribers to talk more to avail the bonuses, he said.
The official said, ‘We are working on formulating guidelines for the recharge-based promotional offers and will set upper ceiling for different types of campaigns,’ he said.
Another BTRC official said the regulator had decided not to encourage any push talking by the telecom companies.
‘Recharge-based promotional campaigns create artificial demand in the market. Mobile phone connection facilitates communication but the telecom companies lure subscribers through promotional. Operators can have profit maximisation agenda as they are doing business but that [profit maximisation tendency] should be rationalised,’ he said.
Currently all six mobile operators — Grameenphone, Banglalink, Robi, Airtel, Citycell and state-run Teletalk — are offering different recharge-based campaigns.
The recharge-based offers of the operators include bonus talk-time, free short message service and free internet bandwidth.
The Section 9 of BTRC’s draft amendments to the Joint Directives (PRS & Promotion), however, said that the mobile phone companies cannot provide any gift or prize to any subscribers for his/her highest usage in a specific period of time.
-With New Age input
