Ismail Hossain
The once-hyped-up mobile number portability (MNP) service has lost its demand, and the number of its users has decreased drastically due to lack of regulatory support and awareness.
The number of MNP service users has decreased to almost one-tenth - from around 50,000 to 5,000 a month.
MNP allows subscribers to swap their cell-phone networks without changing the existing 11-digit numbers within 72 hours at a cost of Tk 57.
It was introduced in Bangladesh in 2018 to enhance market competition to facilitate customers with better service quality.
But within four years, demand for the service has been gradually dying out.
Non-delivery of messages from different service providers, including from the banks, after receiving the MNP, has been acting as a major factor that may make MNP service non-functional.
Many MNP service takers were forced to return to their previous operators, as they failed to deal with service-related complexities and received no remedies from the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC).
"The biggest problem to avail the service is that the users stop receiving text messages after making the switch, which causes great inconvenience to all," Infozillion Teletech BD chief executive officer Mohammad Zulfikar told The Financial Express.
To address the problem, Infozillion, the lone MNP service provider, has set up a platform for all the financial and SMS service providers along with other platforms to connect to. But the company has found that none has connected to the platform.
As SMS aggregators do not want to take the dipping service of Infozillion, the SMS sent by them to a particular subscriber, after he or she obtains the MNP service, remains undelivered.
Dipping is a query response system of the MNP operator for obtaining the accurate location routing number (LRN) of a call or SMS. It allows an SMS aggregator to send SMS to the accurate operator after a customer changes his/her operator.
Apart from the SMS issue, the high cost of MNP service and lack of publicity about it have continued to act as barriers in making the service affordable to the customers.
"We've discussed the issue with the BTRC high officials many times, but nothing fruitful came," the Infozillion CEO said.
The BTRC at last assured Infozillion that the issue of SMS aggregators would be solved by this December, he added.
However, a top executive of a mobile operator told the FE that Infozillion has no intention to expand the MNP service. It does not run any campaign programme, marketing or service promotion activities.
"Only a handful of mobile phone users know about the service," he noted.
With the decline in number of users, earning of Infozillion Teletech eroded significantly, prompting the company to seek reduction in its revenue sharing with the BTRC.
As per the Regulatory and Licensing Guidelines for Mobile Number Portability Services in Bangladesh, Infozillion was supposed to share its revenue with the government at a rate of 15 per cent from the second year of receiving its approval.
Due to the earning erosion, the company requested the government to bring down the rate and let it share revenue at 5.5 per cent rate - applicable for other telecom operators.
Based on the application, submitted by Infozillion, the government reduced the sharing rate for it to 5.5 per cent on September 9, 2021.
Discussions on MNP started in 2009. In June 2013, the BTRC asked the mobile operators to introduce the service by January 2014.
But the operators failed to do so, which compelled the telecom regulator to go for hiring a third-party company.
The regulator awarded licence to Infozillion in 2017, which launched the service in 2018.
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