The proposed merger between Robi and Airtel received strong support from experts, users and lawyers at a public hearing organised by the telecom regulator yesterday.

About 40 people participated in the discussion held at the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission premises, and a good number of them said the merger will give them comfort, reduce costs, offer better services and bring competition to the market.

However, two organisations -- the Consumers Association of Bangladesh and Bangladesh Mobile Recharge Association -- vehemently opposed the merger, saying it will seriously impact the industry as well as employment.

CAB, which has already challenged the initiative at the High Court, said the merger will create an oligopolistic situation in the market.

If this merger takes place, the top three players will have more than 96 percent of the market and they can play as they wish, said Aneek R Haque, a lawyer of CAB.

Companies can merge anytime, but according to the telecom law, there is no scope to merge spectrum, he added.

Another lawyer, Arunima Dutta Aurni, who is supporting the merger, said the top three operators already control 88 percent of the market, so an oligopolistic situation already exists.

Currently, Grameenphone has a 42 percent market share, Banglalink 25 percent, Robi 21 percent, Airtel 7 percent, Teletalk 3 percent and Citycell 1 percent.

The BTRC has already run two separate market studies to gauge the impact of the merger, but Yousuf Ali, another CAB lawyer, said it was not sufficient.

He went on to suggest a neutral study through a reputed organisation like the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Amirul Islam, president of the Bangladesh Mobile Recharge Association, said the proposed merger will make more than one lakh youths jobless.

Although the regulator is yet to approve the merger, joint posters and banners of Robi and Airtel were seen.

On the issue, Shahjahan Mahmood, chairman of BTRC, said the merger is yet to get the final approval, so the operators cannot circulate such such posters or banners.

"We will ask both the operators how they published these posters or banners," he said.

A senior official of Banglalink said Robi now uses the 018 prefix for its subscriber numbers and Airtel 016. "If they merge, which prefix they would use?"

If they get both the 018 and 016 prefix, it will give them a huge benefit, as they can acquire up to 20 crore customers.

In contrast, the other operators have the scope to get up to 10 crore subscribers at most with their single prefix. "And creating a number series is costly," said Albab Yafej Fatmi, an assistant manager of Banglalink.

Banglalink also raised questions on the spectrum imbalance.

Grameenphone has 5.67 crore subscribers with 32MHz spectrum in the 1,800, 2,100 and 900 bands.

The joint entity of Robi and Airtel will have around four crore subscribers with a combined spectrum of 39.8MHz in the three bands. Banglalink has 22MHz spectrum with 3.3 crore customers.

An executive of Grameenphone demanded spectrum auction before taking any decision on the merger.

In response, Anamika Bhakta, vice president of Robi, said spectrum is a valuable asset to the nation, but it will not give any extra benefit if it remains unused. "Bangladesh has lots of unused spectrum," she added.

Didarul Alam, a general manager of Robi, said the merger would stimulate competition, and subscribers would get better services.

Ali Hazari, a mobile user, demanded more public hearings on the issue across the country, but the BTRC chairman rejected the idea. "We will get two complete market studies shortly and we have already received more than a hundred written opinions on the matter," Mahmood said.

The BTRC will compile and examine all the opinions.

Robi and Airtel declared their merger on September 9 last year to become the second largest operator in the country and applied to the BTRC on September 17.

The BTRC also decided to give preliminary approval to the merger on September 29 last year with some conditions.

On January 28, the two parent companies of Robi and Airtel signed a formal deal to merge their operations in Bangladesh.