A writ has been moved to High Court, challenging the sending of irritating SMS to users by mobile phone companies, rise of call charges and demanding compensation to users for call drop.
On Thursday, Dec 13 members of the Law Reporters’ Forum, M Badiuzzaman, Mehedi Hassan Dalim, President of the mobile phone users association, Mahiuddin Ahmed, and Supreme Court lawyers Advocate, Rashidul Hassan, lodged the writ.
The writ wants a court directive telling the mobile companies to safeguard the rights of users and form a committee to assess financial loss of users due to call drop and pay compensation.
In the writ, the chief executive officers of mobile companies plus the telecommunication secretary and BTRC chairman have been made defendants.
Lawyer for the writ submitters, Advocate Ishrat Hassan, says, “The imposition of additional call charges in August without seeking opinion of subscribers is illegal and contrary to subscribers’ rights.”
According to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, BTRC, in the last 13 months there were 222 billion call drops by operators, said the lawyer and added: “GP is on top of call drops with 1.03 billion times, followed by Robi with 761 million times.
In 2014, several operators began giving compensation for call drops and carried out campaigns but the compensation stopped after a few days, which resulted in grievance among subscribers.
Operators were supposed to give compensation from last January but since no step was taken, a writ was lodged on Dec 10.