The GSM Association, an international alliance of mobile phone operators, has recently urged the Bangladesh government to reconsider the amendment to broadband wireless access guideline saying it opened 4G technologies to the WiMAX operators in a non-transparent and discriminatory process. In a letter to posts and telecommunications secretary Md Abubakar Siddiqi the GSMA urged the government to reconsider the amendment and start consultation with the industry stakeholders for better use of the spectrum.
The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission in early October amended the BWA guideline where it said the BTRC would be authorised to allocate necessary frequency, including 2600 MHz band, for the existing and new BWA operators.
The 2600 MHz band is identified as Long Term Evaluation or 4G band for faster data communication of mobile operators by the International Telecommunication Union, the GSMA said.
‘As data demand grows exponentially on a global scale, spectrum bands such as 2600 MHz are important for the mobile operators in meeting long term consumer demand for data,’ it said.
The GSMA said the amendments was done in a non-transparent manner without consulting with the stakeholders and thus unfair advantage was given to the BWA operators in deploying LTE/4G network.
-With New Age input
