Bangladesh’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam complained in a Facebook post about the poor quality service provided by Grameenphone, the country’s largest mobile operator.

According to The Independent newspaper, the minister wrote: “What is the problem with GP [Grameenphone]? Impossible to make calls. Call drops. Couple of months ago they used to send apology SMS after call drop. No trace of that even; also very poor network at Arani.”

He said two years ago he asked them look into it, but there has been no improvement.

State Minister for Post and Telecommunication Tarana Halim, commenting on Alam’s post, said: “I have been repeatedly asking them [GP] to improve their service quality. I have also asked Telenor. It seems they are more interested in making money than providing quality service.”

Grameenphone representative Talat Kamal told The Independent that it is aware of the minister’s complaint and plans to take immediate action.

The operator, 56 per cent owned by Norway’s Telenor, has nearly 54 million mobile connections and a 42 per cent market share.

It boosted its capex by 20 per cent to BDT15.2 billion ($191 million) last year to fast-track its 3G rollout, which it said covers all 64 districts. Its capex to sales ratio was 24.2 per cent in Q2, while its EBITDA margin was 53.9 per cent.

Just 13 per cent of its customers had 3G connections at the end of Q3, according to GSMA Intelligence.