From midnight on Thursday, 29 September 2022, Grameenphone began returning talk time to subscribers for their first dropped call of the day, two days before a new Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission rule makes it compulsory for every operator. The company said it was "committed to improving the customer experience" and would compensate on-net drops, calls between two Grameenphone numbers, automatically.
The rule from 1 October
BTRC announced the directive at a press conference at its Ramna office on Monday, 26 September, with telecommunications minister Mustafa Jabbar joining online. The details, presented by Brigadier General Md Nasim Parvez of the Systems and Services division:
- First and second drop of the day: 30 seconds of talk time each.
- Third to seventh drop: 40 seconds each.
- When: credited by the next day at the latest, with an SMS within 24 hours; operators may credit the same day.
- Validity: 15 days, and no money is deducted from the subscriber until the returned time is used up.
- Scope: on-net calls only, for now. Drops on calls to another operator are not covered.
- Check your count: dial *121*765# on any operator from October to see how many drops you have had.
BTRC calculated that for every 100 seconds of dropped calls, operators will hand back about 309 seconds, which is the point. "The compensation is not what matters," Jabbar said. "The directive exists so that subscribers get uninterrupted service. BTRC wants operators to improve quality and escape the compensation."
What changed from the old rule
A 2016 directive required compensation only from the third drop in a day, which meant almost nobody ever received anything and the operators had no incentive to fix the underlying congestion and handover failures. Paying from the first drop, with an SMS confirming it, makes the cost of poor coverage visible on the operator's books and on the subscriber's phone. It follows the March spectrum auction and the minister's May promise that drops would fall this year.
What to do
Nothing, in theory; the credit is automatic. In practice, keep the SMS confirmations, dial the code at the end of the month, and if a drop-heavy area of your home or office never produces a credit, complain to the operator's 121 line and then to BTRC's 100 hotline. The rule works only if subscribers notice when it does not.
Why your experience and the operator’s figures disagree
Operators routinely report call-drop rates well inside the regulatory limit while subscribers insist calls fail constantly. Both can be telling the truth, because they are counting different things.
A network counts a drop when a call that was established is terminated by the network. It does not count a call that never connected, a call where you heard nothing for eight seconds and hung up, or a call that failed because your handset was clinging to a distant tower rather than handing over to a near one. To a subscriber all four are "the call dropped". To the measurement, only the first is.
That is worth knowing before an argument with a customer-service line. The useful complaint is not "your drop rate is wrong" but a specific record: the date, the time, the number dialled and the place you were standing. Those are the complaints that reach engineering.
