HC bans telcos from raising call tariff without consultation with customers

The High Court has banned telecom operators from raising future call tariffs without taking customer opinions into account.

The order came in response to a petition, known as public interest litigation, filed by a group of people on Thursday.

The petition also called into question the operators’ reluctance to compensate the subscribers for call drops by restricting the charge for such calls.

Justice Tariq ul Hakim and Justice Md Shohrowardi also issued a set of rules asking the authorities and the operators why their failure to safeguard the subscribers’ rights should not be declared illegal.

The court asked why it should not order effective steps to ensure users’ rights and previously announced 4G services, and to stop call drops, unexpected SMS, charging higher call rates and raising tariff.

It asked why it should not order the post and telecom secretary, and the BTRC chairman and its secretary to form a committee to review the call tariffs.

The telecom secretary, the BTRC chairman and its secretary, CEOs of Grameenphone, Robi, Banglalink and government-owned Teletalk will have to respond to the rule in four weeks.

M Badiuzzaman and Mehedi Hasan Dalim of the Law Reporters’ Forum, Supreme Court lawyer Rashidul Hasan and Mobile Phone Subscribers’ Association President Mohiuddin Ahmad filed the writ petition.

Ishrat Hasan, who stood for the petitioners, told bdnews24.com that the court asked the respondents to update it on the progress in executing its orders regularly. Deputy Attorney General Amatul Karim represented the state.

Petitioner Dalim said the mobile phone operators raised the call tariffs in August without taking opinions from the users even though the rate is higher than those in the neighbouring countries. 

“It’s a violation of consumer rights.”

“Besides this, call drops and unexpected SMS are hurting the users. Overall, the users are being duped in different ways or facing harassments or financial damage instead of getting service from the mobile phone operators,” he added.

The operators dropped 2.22 billion calls in 13 months since September 2017, according to a BTRC report cited in the petition.

In 2014, some of the operators started compensating the users for dropped calls, but stopped the measure after some days drawing anger from the subscribers.

The Post and Telecommunication Division later ordered compensation from the operators for call drops to ensure quality service.

The operators were supposed to start compensating the users for dropped calls in January last year, but no visible steps have been taken yet.

Lawyer Ishrat said her clients filed the writ petition after getting no response to a legal notice on the operators regarding the call drop issue.