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Number of mobile connections nears 18cr

Admin — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 16:03:42 +0000

The number of connections of the country’s four mobile phone operators increased by 16.7 lakh to 17.86 crore at the end of August, according to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission data.
The number of mobile internet connections also rose by 17.2 lakh in August.
The BTRC data showed that the number of mobile phone connections was 17.69 crore at the end of July.
According to BTRC officials, the number of active connections does not represent unique users rather it represents the number of SIMs issued by the telecom operators as the telecom rules allow an individual to buy up to 20 SIMs of the telecom operators.
Besides, many people use multiple connections for various reasons and thus the number of internet and mobile phone connections exceeded the total number of population in the country, the officials said.
They said that the number of internet and mobile phone connections would increase further as the use of internet-enabled smart devices, including internet of things, had gradually been gaining popularity.
Each of the smart devices would require internet connection, either broadband or mobile internet, to function, the officials said.
With the rapid growth of digital ecosystem, the people’s dependence on smart devices is growing fast where telecom and internet services are working as enabler, the officials said.
Leading telecom operator Grameenphone added 7 lakh subscribers in August to take its total connections to 8.32 crore in August from 8.25 crore connections in July.
In August, Robi Axiata’s connections increased to 5.23 crore, up 4.5 lakh on 5.18 crore a month ago.
The connection-base of Banglalink rose by 3.3 lakh to 3.69 crore in August from 3.65 in the previous month.
Of the four telecom operators, state-owned telecom operator Teletalk gained the least, 1.8 lakh connections, in August that made its total connections 62.7 lakh. The number of connections of the mobile operator was 60.9 lakh in the previous month.
The number of active internet connections in the country increased to 12.55 crore at the end of August from 12.37 crore a month ago.
Of the internet connections, the internet connection base of the telecom operators increased by 17.2 lakh to 11.54 crore in August from 11.37 crore in the previous month. The number of broadband internet connections, however, remained unchanged at 1.01 crore.

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BTRC sits with mobile cos on compliance today

Admin — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 03:50:06 +0000

The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission sits with the mobile phone operators today about the compliance of different promotional packages offered by the companies.
The BTRC move came after the commission had found some gross violations of promotional offers by some operators recently.The meeting will be held at the BTRC board room in the capital chaired by the commission chairman, Sunil Kanti Bose.
BTRC officials said the mobile phone companies had to design their promotional packages under the Interim Directive on Tariff and Marketing Promotion issued by the commission.
‘We will sit with the mobile operators to discuss the compliance status of their various promotional packages as we found some irregularities,’ said a BTRC official.
‘We will discuss about some specific promotional campaigns of different companies which we think needs clarification,’ he said.
The BTRC recently found that mobile phone company Robi was violating the promotional rules by offering holiday trips and television sets to its subscribers.
According to BTRC rules the mobile phone companies are barred from offering any reward to its subscribers other than free talk-time, SMS and mobile handset.
The industry operators said previously other mobile phone companies also offered holiday trips and luxurious items to the subscribers violating the BTRC rules.

-With New Age input

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Telcos could use surplus funds for 3G payments

Admin — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 04:02:53 +0000

Clarifies BTRC
The mobile phone companies would be allowed to use own surplus funds for paying the licence fee, spectrum acquisition fee and roll-out expense for obtaining 3G licence,
the telecom regulator has recently clarified the operators.
The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission sent a clarification to the mobile phone companies after the operators submitted more than 100 questions to the commission about various aspects of the 3G guideline.
The BTRC clarification also said the operators would be allowed to get loans from local sources during the 36 months of roll-out period if any operators can meet the roll-out criteria before the deadline.
It also allowed operators to sell the asset to any foreign buyers for paying the licence fee, spectrum acquisition fee and roll-out expense of the 3G operation.
According to the 3G guideline, any foreign partner of an entity who wins the 3G auction will have to invest foreign currency directly equal to its percentage of ownership.
It also said no loans from any local sources will be allowed to any foreign partner of a firm for making payment of any 3G-related services.
The BTRC is scheduled to hold the 3G auction for awarding four 3G mobile service licences as per the guideline on June 24.
The telecom regulator will award three licences to three out of five mobile companies operating in the country and one to any foreign firm. Another local operator, the state-run Teletalk, has already got the 3G licence by default.
A total 40 MHz of spectrum will be auctioned for eight blocks where a single bidder will be able to bid for maximum two blocks. The operators could get one additional block if any block remains unsold.
The minimum allocation for a spectrum block is 5 MHz with base price of $20 million for each MHz.
The validity period for a 3G licence will be 15 years which would be renewed in every five years.

-With New Age input

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Mobile phone celebrates 40th anniversary

Admin — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 13:04:46 +0000

The first mobile phone call was made 40 years ago today, on 3 April 1973.
Martin Cooper, a senior engineer at Motorola, called a rival colleague at another telecoms company and announced he was speaking from “a ‘real’ cellular telephone”.
In 2012 a report carried out by the International Telecommunication Union found that there were six billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide.At the time the global population was seven billion.
“In 40 years we’ve moved rapidly from the mobile phone as a businessman’s tool, through consumerisation and internet access to everything being connected,” Dr Mike Short CBE, former president of the Institute of Engineering and Technology and Vice President of Telefonica Europe, told the BBC.
“In the future we will see a much wider range of devices – many of which will be wearable,” he added.
“We will work more fully with all the senses. The move to glasses has begun – how can we use eye control to change and look at pages?
“Wearables, in terms of (smartphone) watches, are coming. We’ll also see health measurement body vests that can communicate with your phone and then your doctor,” said Dr Short.
Phone father
Martin Cooper, now aged 85, is renowned as the “father” of the mobile phone.
In a previous interview with the BBC he admitted he thought the initial cost of the devices (in 1983 the first models cost $3,500, or £2,300) might be prohibitive to the mobile phone becoming a mass-market product, but he did recognise that the hefty handsets would probably shrink.
“We did envision that some day the phone would be so small that you could hang it on your ear or even have it embedded under your skin,” he said.
Mr Cooper said his vision for a mobile phone was first conceived in the late 1960s when the car telephone was invented by AT&T.
He wanted to create “something that would represent an individual so you could assign a number not to a place, not to a desk, not to a home but to a person,” he said.
“It pleases me no end to have had some small impact on people’s lives because these phones do make people’s lives better. They promote productivity, they make people more comfortable, they make them feel safe and all of those things,” Mr Cooper added.
He was also pleased to have been one step ahead of the competition.
“When you are a competitive entity like we were, it’s one of the great satisfactions in life,” he said.

-With bbc.co.uk input

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Pay as you talk

Admin — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 11:07:34 +0000

Mobile phone users will now pay as much as they talk, according to a new directive from Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC).
From August 15, there will be a 10-second pulse applicable to all networks.
For example, for call duration of 1 minute and 6 seconds, the charge will be for 1 minute and 10 seconds and not the full 2 minutes, as is the case now.

-With The Daily Star input

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Child lock in mobile

Admin — Tue, 22 May 2012 10:32:52 +0000

Parents will be able to control their child’s mobile phone thanks to a SIM card remotely managed from a computer. The Bemilo system, to be run on the Vodafone network in UK, offers a service for parents to prevent their children from going online, texting or calling during certain hours.
Unlike an app, a child will not be able to switch the service off. The UK’s Family and Parenting Institute said the SIM would help protect children from mobile phone bullying.
To have the service, parents would need to buy a “safety pack” with a SIM card inside, install it into the child’s phone.
“It’s a SIM that is just like any other SIM you would buy for any other network, but it enables parents to have full control in the context of safety,” Simon Goff, founder and chairman of Bemilo, told the BBC.
“They can allow or disallow certain contacts to call them, and they can set the times of day the phone can operate.”
For instance, he explained, if parents wanted to switch off the phone during school hours, they could do so remotely from a website on their computer.
But even if nearly all the functions on the child’s phone are disabled, parents can always manage the handset in such a way that they are able to reach their children, and the child is able to contact them.
Parents would also be able to read their child’s texts, added Goff.
The service could help prevent mobile phone bullying and “sexting” – when a child is subjected to unwanted phone calls or texts.
It could also prevent a child, especially a teenager, from visiting websites parents deem offensive.
“If you put a child to bed, and we’re talking about young adults here, those who are just under 16 years old, the parents often think they’ve gone to bed – but then they find out that they’re texting very late into the night or accessing the web into the night,” said Goff.

-With bbc.co.uk input

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Tourism info on fingertips

Admin — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:18:25 +0000

The Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation (BPC) yesterday signed a contract with SSL Wireless to provide tourism related services via mobile phones aiming at promoting tourism in the country.
Asmaul Hossain, general manager for public relations and admin of BPC, and Anisul Islam, general manager of SSL, inked the deal at Hotel Obokash, BPC said in a statement.
People will be able to know the updated details of necessary information while in a tour like hotel reservation through cellphones provided with the technical support and know-how of SSL.
All mobile phone subscribers will be able to receive the service after registration.
Hemayet Uddin Talukdar, BPC chairman, was also present.

-With The Daily Star input

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Govt plans SIM tax cut

Admin — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 20:56:58 +0000

Also to rationalise 2G licence renewal fees
The government plans to reduce SIM taxes, and rationalise the fees for 2G licence renewal and spectrum charges, Telecommunications Minister Rajiuddin Ahmed Raju said yesterday.
“I have already talked to the finance minister so the eight hundred taka tax on SIM [subscriber’s identification module] could be reduced in the upcoming budget,” the minister said at a media briefing at his ministry.
Raju said, only one out of the six mobile phone operators can afford the tax. “As a result, the industry passes the tax on to the subscribers indirectly. So, we are thinking about the issue.”
For long, the mobile operators have been branding the SIM tax as a barrier to reaching rural areas.
Earlier this month, Hasanul Haq Inu, head of the parliamentary standing committee on telecommunications ministry, also joined the call for cutting taxes on new connections, terming the Tk 800 tax on SIM cards “inhumane”.
Raju said they will also sit with four mobile operators to talk about the fees of 2G (second generation) licence renewal, and spectrum charges, which the industry players termed “excessive”, and appealed to the government to make those rational, and in line with the national and regional practices to help the sector’s continual growth.
The 2G licences of Grameenphone, Banglalink, Robi, and Citycell will expire this November and they will have to pay large amounts of money for renewals.
The four operators together dominate more than 92 percent of the market of seven crore mobile subscribers in the country, according to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), the industry regulator.
The minister also indicated that the fees could be re-fixed. “We hope we will be able to reach an understanding on a give-and-take basis.”
But BTRC Chairman Zia Ahmed, who was also present at the press meet, told journalists that the fees for spectrum were fixed considering the fact that “the four operators enjoyed free spectrum in the last 15 years”.
“We have not taken into consideration the growth of the subscriber base, which is expected to reach 12 crore in the next few years. But it is still up to the government. We have only given our opinion,” Ahmed told The Daily Star.
The minister said state-run Teletalk will be the country’s first mobile operator to launch 3G technology.
China has agreed to lend $211 million to help the bottom-ranked mobile operator introduce the technology. An agreement between the two countries will be signed in China on February 28, the minister added.
He said by June this year, state-run Telephone Shilpa Sangstha will be able to manufacture and market low-cost laptops, to be priced between Tk 15,000 and Tk 21,000 instead of Tk 15,000 single price announced earlier.
He also refused to endorse State Minister for Home Shamsul Haque Tuku’s plan to hold mobile phone operators responsible for use of SIM cards in crimes.
Post and Telecommunications Secretary Sunil Kanti Bose was also present at the briefing.

Courtesy of The Daily Star

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Telcos to shoulder responsibility for illegal SIMs: Tuku

Admin — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 05:00:56 +0000

The state minister for home, Shamsul Haque Tuku, on Wednesday said that the government had taken a tough stand against crimes using mobiles and the mobile operators will need to shoulder responsibilities for crimes committed using illegal connections.
He said that the home ministry would institute a monitoring cell to prevent mobile-based crimes and unauthorised use of SIMs (subscriber’s identification modules).
’The cell, headed by the joint secretary (political), comprised of representatives of law enforcement agencies, and mobile operators would find out ways to bring an end to crimes using mobiles,’ he said.
‘The government is serious about dealing with such crimes. No connection will be given without the national identity cards,’ he told reporters after a meeting with officials of six mobile operators at the secretariat.
He said that the law enforcers would arrest anyone selling SIMs to customers with forged documents. Anyone but the company sales representatives are found selling SIMs would also face the same treatment,’ he said.
The mobile operators, meanwhile, at the meeting urged the state minister to lift the provision that requires showing the national identity card for buying SIMs while the sales could only be done by authorised dealers and retailers.
The government ordered the rules in October 2010 which, according to the mobile operators, reduced sales of their SIMs.
They proposed that the minister should allow certificates from elected representatives and other identification documents as proof of identity.
The minister assured the operators that he would take up the matter with the national committee on mobile phones.

Courtesy of New Age

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