BTRC wants to set up offices at divisional headquarters

Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) wants to set up offices at all the eight divisional headquarters to expand its regulatory services across the country.

According to its proposal sent to the post and telecommunication ministry last week, the regulator sought some 320 new manpower for the divisions - Dhaka, Chattogram, Khulna, Rajshahi, Barishal, Mymensingh, Sylhet and Rangpur.

Each of the divisional offices would have 40 employees to be led by a director, a senior BTRC official said.

He said the telecom and other relevant services have reached the remotest places of the country. So, the BTRC needs more workforces to monitor, enforce and licencing across the country, he added.

According to the clause number eight of the Telecommunication Act 2001, the commission may set up offices anywhere in the country, but the head office must remain in Dhaka.

But the BTRC needs pre-approval for setting up new offices or recruiting new manpower, the BTRC official said.

He said the BTRC cannot monitor and enforce its law and rules in many places in the country due to not having enough workforces and offices.

In October last year, The BTRC decided to deploy outsourcing agency to measure quality of services provided by the country's telecom operators to their subscribers.

The decision was made as the commission found that checking quality of services provided by the telecom operators including access network service providers in extensive volume would be difficult for the regulator to check with its existing manpower, the official said.

Checking the quality of services is very much essential for finding the lacking in services that the mobile phone operators along with other access network service operators provide to their subscribers.

According to the data published by the BTRC, the total active mobile connections stand at 162.6 million and the total number of active internet users stand at 98.14 million until August, 2019.

Due to the manpower shortage, the commission has so far managed to measure services quality of the mobile phone operators only in the divisional headquarters and on the highways to the divisional cities from capital Dhaka.

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