Grameenphone questions SMP restrictions slapped by BTRC

Grameenphone has questioned the BTRC restrictions on the telecom operator as a significant market power or SMP.

“Purpose of the directives must be to build competition, not defeat success,” Grameenphone Head of Regulatory Affairs Hossain Sadat told reporters during an interaction in Dhaka on Wednesday.

Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission or BTRC recently made SMP regulations to deter any attempt to reduce competition in the telecom market.

It declared Grameenphone SMP on Feb 10 and slapped some restrictions on the firm, including its advertisement campaigns. It was notified about the restrictions on Monday.    

In a statement on Wednesday, Grameenphone said it was pressing the regulator for “logical SMP directives that build greater competition in the market rather than imposing directives that penalise efficient operations and timely investments and raise barriers against better customer services”.

Grameenphone is the largest mobile telecom operator in Bangladesh in terms of subscriber base with around 72.3 million customers, accounting for nearly half of the country’s mobile phone users.

Mobile phone users of the four companies total 156.9 million now, according to the BTRC. Grameenphone boasts 45.8 percent of the total subscriber base.

Robi accounts for 30 percent of the total users, Banglalink makes up 22 percent and government-run Teletalk has 2.5 percent subscribers.

Grameenphone is also ahead in terms of annual revenues. It earned 53 percent of the total market revenues in 2017, Robi 28 percent and Banglalink 18 percent.

Restrictions can be clamped on an operator once it accounts for 40 percent of the subscribers, annual revenues or allocated spectrum, according to the SMP regulations.

The regulations empower the BTRC to act to prevent an operator from conducting certain activities that reduce or create possibilities of reducing market competition.

Sadat raised questions about the regulations and voiced his concern that the remedies proposed by the regulator as well as the process leading up to the remedies are “unprecedented in other SMP regimes; particularly when there is no evidence of abuse of dominant position or anti-competitive behavior by the identified entity”.

“SMP directives should not be used to restrict the ability for entities to grow, innovate and invest,” the Grameenphone official said.

“Labelling an entity an SMP and imposing restrictive and asymmetrical directives without clear rationale or evidence of abuse due to dominance or joint dominance in the market runs counter to principles of fair competition and is ultimately detrimental to create value for customers.”

The initial SMP directives were “not designed to bolster competition rather to transfer value from one operator to another”, he said in the statement.