Call drop rate still within limit: BTRC survey

Despite repeated complaints of call drops from users, the telecom regulator today said the percentage of call drop in the country is still within the limit.

The benchmark for call drop rate is 2 per cent for the mobile operators whereas the rates hovered between 0.18 per cent to 0.37 per cent for top three telecom operators.

Grameenphone, the largest operator, had 0.18 per cent call drop, followed by Banglalink 0.31 per cent and Robi 0.37 per cent.

State-run Teletalk was the worst performer here with 1.31 per cent.

Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission reveals the data after conducting a comprehensive survey titled "Mobile Operators Quality of Service Drive Test of Dhaka City".

The survey was conducted on 13,027 call samples covering 1,121 kilometres of area starting from January 23 to February 8 this year.

However, the Bangladesh Mobile Phone Subscribers Association has rejected the results of the survey.

"The BTRC survey has failed to portray the real picture of the quality of telecom services in the country," Mohiuddin Ahmed, president of the association, told The Daily Star.

The results would have been much worse if the survey was conducted by a neutral third-party surveyor, he said.

According to the survey, Grameenphone and Robi were the best performers in 4G download speed with 5.72 Mbps, but both of them failed to reach the standard of over 7 Mbps set by the BTRC.

Banglalink 4G data speed hit a maximum of 4.94 Mbps while Teletalk's figure was the lowest at 2.82 Mbps.