Bangladesh's second- and third-largest mobile operators, Robi and Banglalink, have taken opposing positions on when the country's regulator should hold an auction for spectrum in the E-GSM band, according to a report in The Daily Star.

The disagreement puts the two carriers on opposite sides of a policy question that Bangladeshi operators and the regulator, the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), have discussed repeatedly in recent years: whether to release E-GSM spectrum now or defer the sale.

At stake is a sliver of radio-frequency capacity that sits just below the conventional GSM 900 MHz band. E-GSM, or Extended GSM, covers frequencies running from 880 MHz downward — capacity that mobile operators could refarm to widen their existing 900 MHz holdings or to carry additional 2G and, in some deployments, 4G traffic. In a market whereBangladeshi operators have long complained that average per-operator spectrum holdings are among the lowest in South Asia, every additional megahertz carries commercial weight.

The split between the two operators follows a familiar pattern in Bangladesh's telecom policy debates. When the BTRC floats a proposed spectrum assignment or price revision, the country's carriers rarely speak with one voice, because each operator's network position, subscriber base and balance sheet point to a different commercial optimum. An operator that already holds comfortable 900 MHz capacity has little incentive to bid for adjacent E-GSM spectrum at the prices the regulator typically sets; an operator that is spectrum-starved sees the same auction as a chance to catch up.

That dynamic has repeatedly complicated the BTRC's spectrum policy. Bangladesh's mobile market has three principal players — Grameenphone, Robi and Banglalink — and a fourth, state-owned Teletalk, which also participates in spectrum assignments. Any auction the regulator designs must attract enough bidders to be credible. If only one private operator shows interest in the E-GSM band, the sale risks either collapsing or assigning the spectrum at a price close to the floor, which in turn affects government revenue expectations from the telecom sector.

Spectrum pricing is a particularly sensitive variable in Dhaka. Bangladeshi operators have for years argued that the BTRC's per-megahertz prices — set administratively rather than through market discovery — are high relative to the revenue the spectrum can generate, given the country's low average revenue per user. The government, which treats spectrum receipts as a meaningful budget line, has generally held prices firm. That standoff has shaped every recent spectrum transaction in the market, and the E-GSM question now lands in the same fault line.

The disagreement also carries technology-planning implications. Both Robi and Banglalink have pushed 4G coverage expansion across Bangladesh and are preparing for the eventual introduction of 5G, a process the government has signalled it wants to see accelerate. Low-band spectrum in the 900 MHz region is prized for rural coverage and indoor penetration, so the decision on when — and at what price — to release E-GSM capacity feeds directly into each operator's rollout economics for the next network generation.

For the BTRC, the immediate task is to reconcile the opposing operator positions and decide whether an E-GSM auction goes ahead on the current timeline or slips. The regulator's next move — a revised auction plan, a price consultation, or a postponement — will determine whether the band is assigned in the near term or joins the list of spectrum questions that Bangladesh has carried from one policy cycle to the next.