Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) is going to hold a public hearing on March 30 to understand users' experiences on quality of telecom services, according to an announcement published on its website on Monday.
Due to the Covid-19, the commission had to cancel the third public hearing on service quality of telecom operators scheduled for 30 March 2020 - the same date last year.
BTRC Deputy Director Md Zakir Hossain Khan said the commission had decided to host the event to learn directly from the users about their experiences over the quality of services of telecom operators and also to know users' perception of BTRC.
Interested customers will have to register online (www.btrc.gov.bd/registration-form) to attend the hearing; starting on Monday, the registration will remain open until March 17, he added.
BTRC high-ups and senior executives from mobile operators, among other stakeholders, are supposed to attend the hearing to be held at the auditorium of the Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh in the capital's Ramna.
Earlier, taking into consideration the Covid-19 reality, BTRC planned to hold a virtual public hearing to listen to people's complaints on the quality of services provided by the telecom operators.
However, the commission later backtracked on the decision.
BTRC received a few hundred applications for the last suspended hearing in 2020.
Prior to that, the last two hearings took place in June 2019 and November 2016.
Some 202 customers registered online and 165 got invitations from the BTRC to take part in the last hearing held in 2019. On the other hand, at the inaugural public hearing, 1,050 customers had registered and the commission invited 420 people eventually.
As per the BTRC, it received around 0.6 million complaints in 2020 against mobile operators and other licensees under the commission.
Mobile phone subscribers increased by 4.5 million and internet subscribers by 11 million during this time period, said the BTRC.
In the past one and a half years, around 3.5 million phones were manufactured locally in the country and a total of 12 mobile phone factories were approved to run operations.
However, the mobile operators haven't improved the quality of services in line with the increase in the number of service recipients.
To improve the services further, BTRC in January launched a six-month drive test in 300 upazilas across the country to measure the quality of services of the mobile operators.
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