The introduction of 4G will open the door to a whole new world of services to the citizens of Bangladesh. But the combination of high fees for the needed airwaves and the world's lowest average revenue per user threatens this bright future.
Mobile networks have become integrated with the everyday lives of over 5 billion people around the world. Mobile helps us keep in touch with friends and family, stay on top of work, monitor our health, manage our homes and businesses, conduct financial transactions, and so much more.
Thanks to increasingly affordable smartphones, Bangladesh has a golden opportunity to get more people connected in more meaningful ways. And along with other countries in the region, including Pakistan and Vietnam, Bangladesh is expected to see rapid smartphone growth over the next few years.
But to go from expectation to reality, the government has an important role to play. It sets the rules and policies that govern access to a key ingredient of mobile networks, access to spectrum licences. These rules include setting the fees that mobile operators must pay for licences.
The Digital Bangladesh vision bets on digital technology to bridge developmental gaps through improved productivity and financial access for SMEs, agricultural businesses and rural enterprises. Spectrum fees that are unduly high, however, put Digital Bangladesh at risk. The GSMA recently published a research report titled 'Effective Spectrum Pricing' that analyses 325 spectrum auction awards between 2000 and 2016 across 60 countries and provides evidence that links high spectrum prices with lower quality networks and more expensive mobile broadband services.
While the government of Bangladesh is taking the important step of allocating spectrum that will enable 4G services available, unfortunately, it is proposing to set the fees so high that it may stall these services before they will be launched. In fact, the proposed base prices (shown in dollars per megahertz per population normalised for GDP per capita based on purchasing power parity [PPP] of each country) for the spectrum auction outpace those in all other countries that have made this spectrum available in recent times.
These prices are on top of other proposed fees that will make the business case for purchasing the right to use this spectrum a challenging one. If this spectrum goes unsold it means it would not be used to connect anyone, which would be awful waste.
But the government of Bangladesh has the opportunity to do the right thing and set modest auction reserve prices and fair annual fees that would give mobile operators a chance to invest in networks as well as pay for access to spectrum.
The spectrum in the proposed auction will help operators provide mobile coverage and deliver higher speeds and an overall improved experience along with services such as video streaming. The services stand to have a profound impact on the citizens of Bangladesh.
But these amazing new services can only be offered when the key objective is to provide connectivity. There is little doubt the government understands the importance of mobile broadband, and its Digital Bangladesh and draft NTP plan shows that. But in order to make those dreams come into reality, action is needed to secure the future of mobile broadband in Bangladesh.
Source: http://www.thedailystar.net/business/bangladesh-needs-affordable-4g-now-1441753