by Naim-Ul-Karim
DHAKA, Oct. 1 (Xinhua) -- Bangladesh has launched the much awaited Mobile Number Portability (MNP) service in an apparent bid to put pressure on telecom companies to better serve customers.
The facility paves the way for the country's over 154 million mobile subscribers to switch operators without changing their phone numbers.
Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) announced the launch of the MNP service in capital Dhaka on Monday morning.
Infozillion BD Teletech Consortium Ltd, a joint venture between a Bangladeshi firm and a Slovenian firm, has been awarded the license for launching the MNP service in Bangladesh.
The country's telecom regulator in November last year handed over the MNP license to the joint venture company Infozillion BD Teletech Consortium Ltd (IBTCL) asking it to roll out the service within six months.
Mabroor Hossain, managing director of IBTCL, has told Xinhua that all operators have been connected with its network paving the way for their subscribers to avail the MNP service retaining their original mobile phone numbers when changing from one mobile network carrier to another.
He said customers will be charged 50 taka as well as a 15 percent value-added tax (VAT) to change carriers within 72 hours. To do so within 24 hours, another 100 taka has to be paid, he added. (1 U.S. dollar equals to about 84 taka).
BTRC Acting Chairman Md Jahurul Haque announced the launch of the service and said this brings an end to the telecom regulator's efforts since 2009 to introduce the service.
He expressed the hope that MNP will improve service quality of the operators as they have to retain existing customers and attract customers from other operators.
The total number of Bangladesh's mobile phone subscribers hit 154.179 million at the end of August, statistics of the country's telecom regulator showed.
Bangladesh has now four mobile companies, three of which are foreign-backed cellphone operators.
The number of subscribers of the mobile operators, Grameenphone, Robi Axiata, Banglalink and state-run Teletalk stood at 70.709 million, 46.132 million, 33.466 million and 3.837 million respectively at the end of August, BTRC data showed.
Also BTRC data stated the number of internet subscribers in the country reached 90.501 million in August.
Of the total subscribers, the BTRC data showed there were 84.685 million mobile Internet and 5.733 million broadband Internet users in the country while the rest of the connections are through WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access).
