Tech City Content Counselor: The cost of talking to any operator using Offnet or OnNet is a minimum of 1 paise per minute.
At a meeting in the presence of the Prime Minister's Information Advisor Sajeeb Wazed Joy last week, it was decided to set the minimum collateral minutes at a rate of 1 paise. But later on in the meeting, this rate is mentioned as 1 paise. Moreover, while negotiating the maximum rate of one paisa per paise per minute, it remains the same as two paisa.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has begun implementing the decision. The BTRC's office said that the operators will be instructed to implement the new rates by letter this week.
Currently the lowest bid is 25 paise for talking on the same operator or the minimum rate of 2 paise for offnet or other operator.
Sectors concerned say that setting a common collateral will bring customer comfort.
However, the minimum cost has been slightly higher and because of this, the overall cost of the customer using mobile phones may be higher than before, which will help the operators to increase their revenue, officials at various levels say.
They say the average call cost for OnNet was 5 paise, although previously the lowest rate was 25 paise. And the majority of the country's total voice calls were Onet's calls. Again, the minimum charge was 5 paise in the offset, but the operators charged on average 5 paise.
Now two paisa paisa, but they think the customer will have to pay more than that.
They said that uniform collateral is being done to eliminate the fear that the on-call and offnet separate collateral market could create unequal competition in the mobile number portability service in the country.
