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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