Jon3G
18th April 2005, 04:18 PM
By Lester Haines
Published Friday 1st April 2005 10:27 GMT
A cut-price mobile phone promotion in Bangladesh ended in anarchy after application forms for the Teletalk Bangladesh deal ran out, provoking a riot in the capital Dhaka. Thousands of people who had queued in inclement weather expressed their dissatisfaction with the cock-up, and were baton-charged by police for their trouble.
According to the BBC, Teletalk managing director, M Obaidullah, said: "1,900 connections were offered on the first day from 11 outlets". However, an angry businessman estimated one queue at 5,000 eager would-be customers, with just "a few dozen forms" to feed demand. Shafiqur Rahman told AFP: "They cheated us. They should have said that only a few hundred would be on offer on the first day."
For his part, Obaidullah admitted: "We did not realise that people would respond so overwhelmingly." He added that the company expected low take-up of the offer due to an ongoing national strike. He promised to make more forms available by Saturday. ®
www.theregister.co.uk
Published Friday 1st April 2005 10:27 GMT
A cut-price mobile phone promotion in Bangladesh ended in anarchy after application forms for the Teletalk Bangladesh deal ran out, provoking a riot in the capital Dhaka. Thousands of people who had queued in inclement weather expressed their dissatisfaction with the cock-up, and were baton-charged by police for their trouble.
According to the BBC, Teletalk managing director, M Obaidullah, said: "1,900 connections were offered on the first day from 11 outlets". However, an angry businessman estimated one queue at 5,000 eager would-be customers, with just "a few dozen forms" to feed demand. Shafiqur Rahman told AFP: "They cheated us. They should have said that only a few hundred would be on offer on the first day."
For his part, Obaidullah admitted: "We did not realise that people would respond so overwhelmingly." He added that the company expected low take-up of the offer due to an ongoing national strike. He promised to make more forms available by Saturday. ®
www.theregister.co.uk