05 November 2024

Bangladesh’s telecoms regulator has reportedly fined Grameenphone, Robi Axiata and Banglalink for breaching regulations on promotional SMSs, despite operators saying the regulations are impractical and too restrictive.

The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has reportedly fined the telcos BDT500,000 each for sending more than three promotional SMSs per day to their customers, which is a violation of a BTRC directive issued last year on data and related packages. The BTRC has been issuing warnings to telcos for the past year, asking for explanations as to why they were violating the directive.

According to the response from Grameenphone, one problem is that the rate of successful SMS deliveries averages around 68% because of system limitations and handset issues. For churned or inactive customers, the rate is as low as 30%. As a result, SMSs often need to be re-sent. Banglalink said that the bulk of its customers still use 2G devices users with limited access to digital channels, so SMS is the only way to reach them with new promotions. Meanwhile, Robi said that its SMS platform operates separately from its data and voice platforms, making it technically infeasible to restrict the number of SMS sent.