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Mobile users pay high for P1 internet package

Abdullah Mamun
Abdullah Mamunhave been charging high for the 'pay as you go' or 'Pl' internet package for the past seven years despite the internet bandwidth price having fallen several times in that period.
Grameenphone, for instance, charges Tk 20 for every megabyte (MB) used under the Pl package, meaning a usage of 1 gigabyte (GB) would set a subscriber back by Tk 20,000.
But the operator charges less than Tk 2 for every MB in its other internet packages, such as the 'minipack' costing Tk 29, which provides 15 MB.
"I was just surfing Facebook and Bloomberg the other day and my charges came to Tk 200. I used up 10 MB of data,” said a Grameenphone subscriber.
Banglalink, the country's second largest operator in terms of subscription, offers the same rate of Tk 20 for per MB of data used to its pre-paid customers.
Robi Axiata, Airtel Bangladesh and even the state-owned Teletalk follow the same tariff for their 'pay asyougo' internet packages.
A Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) official said the internet price was slashed several times over the last few years but the
operators are basing their Pl packages on the old bandwidth price of Tk 70,000 for 1 megabit persecond (Mbps).
"The commission is planning to reduce the overall tariff rate of the Pl packages,” he said.
The BTRC official said the mobile operators purchase unlimited bandwidth from the internet gateways at Tk 8,000 for per Mbps -- but they sell it to the subscribers at a higher rate.
"The same operators are offering Tk 275 to Tk 350 for 1 Gbps (gigabit per second) data for their subscribers. If any customer does not shift from the P1 packages, he/she will have to pay a lot of money for surfing the internet,” said the official.
But the high charges would not feel like a rip-off if the mobile internet speed was good. In reality, the speed of 1Kbps to 12 Kbps is very slow, with the connection flickering on most occasions.
Of the 2.94 crore internet users in the country, 2.77 crore use the mobile internet, according to BTRC data.
Kazi Monirul Kabir, the chief communications officer of Grameenphone, said the operator discourages the subscribers from using the Pl package and is taking steps to make it as cost-effective as possible.
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