The complaint every Bangladeshi mobile user has made at least once, that a 7-day pack expires with 3 GB unused, finally reached the regulator. On Thursday, 28 April 2022, the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission unveiled two new kinds of data package that all four operators must offer by 31 May: "unlimited" packs valid for a year, and uninterrupted monthly packs with a daily cap.
The year-long packs and their prices
- Grameenphone: 15 GB for Tk 1,099; 5 GB for Tk 449.
- Robi: 10 GB for Tk 319.
- Banglalink: 5 GB for Tk 306.
- Teletalk: 26 GB for Tk 309; 6 GB for Tk 127.
"Unlimited" here means unlimited in time, not volume, and even that is capped at 365 days; BTRC systems director general Brigadier General Md Nasim Parvez said a technical limit made a longer validity impossible. The packs are data only, with no voice, SMS or social-media bundles attached, and unused data will not carry forward when they end.
The monthly packs with a daily cap
Grameenphone will sell a 30-day pack at Tk 399 with up to 1 GB a day and one at Tk 649 with up to 2 GB a day, plus a 365-day version at 1 GB a day. Robi and Banglalink each offer 30 days at up to 2 GB a day; Teletalk has four 30-day packs at 1, 2, 3 and 5 GB a day. Prices for most of these were not announced at the launch.
Who actually saves
Do the per-gigabyte arithmetic before switching. Grameenphone's 15 GB for a year works out at about Tk 73 per GB; its ordinary 7-day and 30-day packs cost Tk 15-25 per GB. Teletalk's 26 GB for Tk 309 is under Tk 12 per GB, but only where Teletalk has coverage. The year-long packs make sense for light users, a parent's phone or a second SIM that mostly needs to stay alive for bKash and OTPs, and for anyone who has repeatedly lost data to expiry. Heavy users are still better off with the short packs, and better off again with home broadband.
The regulator's mood
Telecommunications minister Mustafa Jabbar said removing time limits gives people "freedom to use the internet" and that "people are not satisfied with the current service". BTRC chairman Shyam Sunder Sikder went further: the commission "is not satisfied with the mobile operators, it is annoyed", and will fine them if quality does not improve. With Tk 10,646 crore of new spectrum sold to the same operators a month earlier, the regulator now expects visible results.
