The telecom regulator is reconsidering its decision to put a daily recharge limit of Tk 500 for pre-paid mobile subscribers, after uproar from users and operators.
“We have decided to revisit the decision considering the inconvenience of the subscribers,” said Shahjahan Mahmood, chairman of the Bangladesh Telecom-munication Regulatory Commission, after a meeting with mobile phone operators at his office yesterday.
All six operators opposed the government move, as it would inconvenience subscribers, affect revenues, and impact services and the whole digitisation process.
Currently, there is no bar on the daily recharge, though Tk 1,000 is the limit for every single transaction.
The BTRC issued a directive on December 28 to cap the maximum recharge amount following a government order aimed at preventing illegal termination of overseas incoming calls. However, operators in the meeting said recent trends showed that the cap will not be effective for that purpose.
On Wednesday, the Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh in a letter to the BTRC said after the 3 percent supplementary duty and 15 percent VAT on mobile recharge, a subscriber ultimately enjoys just Tk 422 of a Tk 500 recharge. At yesterday’s meeting, operators said 12-15 lakh internet users who use large volume internet packages will be directly affected by the recharge cap.
Also, more than 50 packages will have to be redesigned in order to comply with the directive, they said.
Sometimes, job seekers and students have to make one-off payments of more than Tk 700 through mobile phones, and the cap will create a major hurdle for them, an official of state-run Teletalk said at the meeting.
Users buying bus and train tickets through mobile phones will also face similar problems, operators said.
BTRC also received some proposals from the mobile phone operators at the meeting, according to Mahmood.
After analysing the offers, a fresh proposal will be sent to the telecom ministry. A final decision will come after the government’s feedback, he said. Earlier, BTRC sent a proposal to the telecommunication division to increase the top-up limit to Tk 2,000 but the division rejected the proposal.
A senior official of the BTRC, who attended meeting, said this time the commission would not propose any amount to the government; rather, it will only specify the problems caused by the recharge cap.
