Thursday, September 10, 2015

Telecom talks all around


It is unavoidable that the greatest highlight today would be the proposed merger of Robi with Airtel. The fourth largest telecom operator, Bharti Airtel, if merged with the third largest, Malaysia based Robi Axiata Ltd , would become the second largest in the country. Airtel, announcing earlier they will retract all operations from Bangladesh, may eventually see a different future.

Both parties said it is too early to comment. This merger, would surely raise questions on the impact of consumer end benefits, whether they chose to be cost competitive to others initially and behave as a duopoly with Grameenphone, or an increase in overall competition is just a matter of wait-and-see.

In terms of consumer benefits, despite bandwidth price cuts, mobile operators are refusing to cut mobile internet prices, potentially hurting consumer usage. The Prime minister, reasoning greater use would result in higher incomes and resultantly wider reach, only faced counter-arguments universally lowest internet prices being offered already and requiring more investment for capacity building. Also, Robi provides free internet through Internet.org, being accessed 2 million times daily predominantly through handsets.

The political advisor of the PM recently commented in favor of operators recently as well, to unburden these operators from network tower building and maintenance, which will refocus them towards service provision.

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