Editorial
Why This Digital Denial?
We are constrained to write on this act of deliberate discrimination by Bangladesh Telephone & Telegraph Board yet again hoping that this will be the last one from them. Analogue telephone exchanges have been transformed into digital with their numbers converted accordingly in most of the city areas under different exchanges. Even new digital exchanges are being installed at district and thana levels. All of this is being done because the analogue system has become obsolete with the introduction of digital technology which is reliable and less bothersome. In the capital city cables were laid as far back as in 1994-95 for the conversion into digital system. The BTTB had promised to complete the job of converting around 2 lakh 34 thousand analogue telephones in the metropolis into digital ones by December, 1999. Accordingly, though not on schedule, bulk of the phones were converted leaving only about 56,000 subscribers to suffer the ghost billing in some cases and despicable service in many. According to a report carried by The Daily Star on Saturday, BTTB is in no position to turn the 56,000 analogue numbers into digital even at the end of this year. In some areas like Nilkhet, Gulshan, Sher-e-Bangla Nagar and Maghbazar partial conversion has taken place free of charge but it is not understandable why a portion of the subscribers will be made to suffer. We demand of the BTTB to quickly extend the digital facility to those subscribers who are suffering badly without it.
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