Country’s leading mobile phone operator Grameenphone on Sunday said that it has completed the 3G rollout in 64 districts within six months since its commercial launch.
‘This is the fastest 3G-rollout in the history of Telenor Group with our ambition to provide internet for all,’ GP chief executive officer Vivek Sood said at a press briefing at Westin hotel on the day.
He said the GP completed the rollout in 64 districts in six months where as the regulatory deadline for that was nine months.
GP chief technical officer Tanveer Mohammad said 40 per cent of the GP customers are under 3G coverage area and approximately 85 per cent of 3G enabled devices can access the network.
The number of 3G subscribers stands at around 4 lakh at present, said Vivek.
The GP took 10 MHz of spectrum in the 3G spectrum auction in September last year and came to commercial operation in the following month.
Asked about the allegation of poor service quality of 3G, the GP CEO said that service quality has always been the priority of the company.
‘There might be some occasional problems but at this point of time our 3G subscribers’ base is less than our capacity. So I don’t believe there is any problem in general,’ he said.
He said in some cases the handset devices are not configured accordingly because of lack of awareness of the users.
When asked about the recent increase in call drops in GP network, GP CTO replied that the network is sound enough to handle the traffic.
‘For a successful inter-operator call, you need two mobile operators and an interconnection operator to perform simultaneously. So, call drop of a GP user does not always mean the fault is in our network,’ he said.
Replying to a query about GP making the service quality reports public, GP’s chief corporate affairs officer Mahmud Hossain said GP has started submitting service quality reports to the BTRC.
‘We have no problem to publish it for all. We need some clarification from the regulator on the QoS issue. After we and BTRC agree on what to publish and in which manner, GP will have no problem to disclose it,’ he said.
-With New Age input
