Since the government outlawed the selling of Grameenphone’s SIM card, six months have passed. The operator is losing an average of 40,000 SIM sales every day as a result of this embargo. Additionally, they lost nearly 3.5 million clients.
Grameenphone’s SIM card sales were prohibited on June 29 by the Bangladesh Telecom Regulatory Commission (BTRC), who questioned the quality of the company’s service. The BTRC reports that following October, the number of active Grameenphone SIM cards was just over 81.4 million. There are about 3.5 million less than there were in May. If operators don’t offer new SIMs, customers leave since certain active SIMs frequently become inactive.
Officials from Grameenphone maintain that they are doing everything they can to raise the caliber of service, including purchasing and installing more frequencies, building new towers, and linking existing towers with optical fiber cables. The operator said that these actions raised the level of service quality. The telecom provider has written to the BTRC to analyze the enhancement in service quality and request that the restriction on the sale of SIM cards be lifted.
Post and telecommunication minister Mustafa Jabbar told Prothom Alo on Sunday, “I’ve received a report from BTRC today (Sunday). I’ve seen that the infrastructural development done by Grameenphone in last six months is noticeable,” he said adding that the infrastructural development Grameenphone undertaken within this time is somewhat satisfactory.
The BTRC highlighted Grameenphone’s weak network on the day of the Padma Bridge’s inauguration as its justification. On July 3, the operator wrote a letter to Grameenphone outlining what transpired that day. The operator stated that although an application in this regard was being considered, it wished to strengthen the network on the Padma Bridge. The operator raised the Base Transceiver Stations’ (BTS) maximum capacity in light of the situation. Three temporary towers with powerful equipment were also erected to bring the bridge under network coverage.
