The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) will hold a hybrid public hearing on telecommunication services on August 19, inviting consumers and stakeholders to raise questions, complaints and suggestions directly before the regulator and industry representatives.
The hearing will begin at 10:00 am and will be conducted both online and offline, although online participation will be limited by the platform's maximum capacity, according to a BTRC notice.
Individuals and organisations wishing to participate have been asked to submit their questions and opinions through an online registration form by 26 July. Following a review of the submissions, BTRC will notify selected participants and those whose issues are considered relevant. Meeting credentials for the virtual session will be sent through email or SMS.
The commission said the initiative is aimed at collecting public feedback on telecommunication services and addressing consumer concerns in the public interest.
The telecom regulator has been organising public hearings regularly as part of its consumer engagement programme. Senior officials from the Posts and Telecommunications Division, BTRC and executives of mobile operators, internet service providers and other telecom entities usually attend the sessions to respond to complaints and explain service-related issues.
BTRC first introduced a dedicated public hearing on the quality of telecom services in November 2016. The second such hearing was held in June 2019. A third hearing, scheduled for March 2020, was cancelled because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The commission later resumed the initiative, with another public hearing held in May 2024 where subscribers highlighted persistent problems including poor network coverage, call drops, slow mobile internet, tariff issues and delays in resolving complaints.
Consumer complaints have remained a key challenge for the regulator.
According to BTRC's annual reports, the commission received 10,528 complaints through its consumer complaint mechanisms during the 2018-19 fiscal year and resolved 9,373 of them, representing an 89 per cent settlement rate. The complaints are received through its 24-hour call centre using shortcode "100", the online complaint portal and other channels.
Complaint volumes increased significantly after BTRC expanded access to its call centre. During 2019, the regulator received more than 14,000 complaints, compared with around 7,900 a year earlier. The largest number of complaints related to SIM barring, network quality, service quality, tariff issues and mobile number portability. However, only about 37 per cent of the complaints had been resolved at the time the annual report was released, with many cases remaining under process.
More recent BTRC data also indicate that complaint resolution varies widely among operators. During March 2023 to February 2024, private mobile operators resolved more than 98 per cent of complaints lodged through the regulator's call centre, while only around one-quarter of complaints against state-owned Teletalk were resolved.
According to information presented at the 2024 public hearing, BTRC received 15,335 customer complaints during the 2022-23 fiscal year. More than one-third of the complaints were related to the quality of telecom services, while fewer than one-fifth concerned mobile internet speed.
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