Conflicts have arisen between Grameenphone(GP) and Robi, the country's two leading mobile phone operators. Although there had been some leg pulling between the top and second top operators of the country for business reasons, this time it has gone to another stage.
At this stage of the conflict, however, Robi is getting supports of Banglalink and Teletalk. On the other hand the top mobile phone operator GP has is threatened to fight alone.
Even if the two sides did not go face to face in the conflict, those who are watching the situation understanding better.
Talking to the mobile phone operator, it is reported that the new conflict has begun to focus when Robi had gone forward to help the government in the corona situation.
Robi is giving special support to the government on how to identify corona risk areas by analyzing Artificial and Big Data Intelligence in corona situation.
But GP could not take the matter lightly. At that point GP tried to attract Banglalink by her side but failed.
Instead, GP went down in the field to organize a walkathon with the state minister for information and communication technology.
In the meantime, when the schools, colleges, offices and courts have been closed due to corona, people have become home-bound resulted the increase of use of Internet data. Under this situation Robi wanted to get a better internet service by getting extra spectrum. In this issue GP opposed. But Robi got the other two operators on her side.
They debated on the issue in the AMTOB(Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh) meeting. Robi's CEO Mahtab Uddin Ahmed, now president of AMTOB, could not pass the spectrum demand because of opposition from GP.
Later, Robi, Banglalink and Teletalk, sent a prayer to the government seeking extra spectrum for three months. But GP did not participate with them, now opposing the petition. Opposition has gone to such an extent that GP communicated the high level of the government so that these three operators do not extra spectrum.
Earlier, when Robi and Airtel got unified the confrontation between Robi and GP started to get new levels. However, when the two operators were in trouble with the audit, the conflict has been somewhat relaxed for a few days but now it has risen again.
However, even in the matter of audit, when using mobile number portability (MNP) technology, customers continue to run to Robi with the same number GP created many obstacles and turned the entire MNP complicated. As a result, the BTRC is concerned that MNP is going to fail in Bangladesh.