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Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB) has expedited its services including connections within a short time, in a bid to survive competition in the land-phone market in the port city of Chittagong.
"I got a demand note for Tk 10,000 within a day after submitting application for a fresh connection at my residence at Agrabad in Chittagong. That is unimaginable from a state-owned entity. I hope that I will get connection shortly", one would-be subscriber of the BTTB said.
The BTTB has lately showing its vigour to stay in the competition following the entry of private competitors to the sector.
General Manager (GM) of the BTTB in Chittagong Engineer Saleh Ahmed Hakim said they are facing stiff competition due to the arrival of private land-phone operators in the port city.
"The rush of 'would-be' clients has ebbed in our offices in the recent days and we are receiving a limited number of applications for fresh connections", he said.
He also hinted at the BTTB's reviewing the call charges for survival in the open-market competition as the private land phone operators are offering lucrative packages to attract new customers.
Very recently, two private telephone companies -- Bay Phones and Rankstel -- entered the Chittagong landphone market, posing a threat to the operations of the state-owned entity -- the sole operator until recently.
Sources at the Rankstel said they have a capacity to provide instant connections to more than 100,000 with CDMA 2000 1X technology which is portable while Bay phone has facilities for fixed-line connections similar to that of the BTTB.
Within a very short period, the two new private operators have already given connections to about 25,000 telephone-lines in Chittagong and its adjacent areas.
Sources at the GM office of the BTTB in Chittagong said that the state-owned operator would give connections to new 83,000 telephone lines by June next in the port city and Hathazari Upazila. The work for installing new underground cable is going on in full swing.
Sources said the new cable networking in the city will be completed by April next.
The BTTB sources also said they are issuing 60 demand notes a day against fresh and old pending applications.
They added that the number of new applications for BTTB connections declined to a great extent. "We're receiving hardly 20 fresh applications a day from the city dwellers", Kamal Uddin, one official at the GM office of the BTTB, said.
Sources further hinted that the BTTB will give 83,000 connections by next June.
Presently the BTTB has about 80,000 clients in Chittagong city. More than 100,000 applications for new connections were lying pending with the BTTB before the government allowed the entry of private operators to the landphone market last June. Out of this, the BTTB has now 4,000 pending cases for issuing demand notes.
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