Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission will sit in a meeting today with the internet service provider and mobile phone operators following
the ongoing protest for reducing the internet price.
BTRC officials said a delegation of protestors, led by one of its organisers Julius Chowdhury, met the commission high-ups to place their demand.
‘We asked them to submit a written proposal for better result and the commission is also planning to push operators to reduce the internet price,’ a senior BTRC official told New Age.
He said the BTRC will meet the operators to discuss the issue and then will send a directive after analysing the proposals from the protestors.
At a press conference last week, the information and communications technology related organisations demanded that internet price should be fixed at Tk 0.10/day per Megabyte and Tk 10/day per Gigabyte, within 15 days.
They said the operators are selling internet at higher price although the government reduced the bandwidth price many times.
They also announced a non-stop sit-in in front of the BTRC office from June 12 if their demand is not met.
According to the draft amendment of the joint directive of 2010, the commission reduced in phases the internet bandwidth price to Tk 8,000 a megabyte in 2012 from Tk 72,000 in 2004, the mobile operators continued to charge P1 package subscribers at the same rate for the last eight years.
It said the mobile operators should cut down the price of internet package by half from Tk 0.02 a kilobyte.
Besides, a subscriber can use up to Tk 100 under the P1 package and if the subscriber wants to use more than the amount, he or she has to migrate to other packages, it said.
BTRC officials said due to the pressure from the mobile companies, the commission high-ups are delaying the amendment.
-With New Age input
