The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission on Sunday said that an International Gateway service operator can serve maximum 35 VOIP Service Providers at a time.
The BTRC in a directive issued on the day said that the IGW operators can select 20 VSP operators of their own choice and the rest of the 15 will be assigned by the commission.
The IGW operators, who assign ports for international calls, were asked to submit the names of their preferred 20 VSP operators, who carry international calls, within May 25.
The directive also allowed the IGW operators and VSP operators to sign agreement between themselves and also with foreign carriers which will be subject to commission’s approval.
The interconnection between the IGW operators and VSP operators will be maintained under their specific licensing guideline.
The VSP operators were also allowed to monitor their offline traffic and to get offline billing facilities from the IGW operators.
The IGW operators were allowed to assign port to VSP operators on the basis of need. The VSP operators were also allowed for form consortium to get the bulk number of ports.
If any VSP operator fails to carry any traffic from the IGW operators in a span of two months, the IGW operators can cancel the agreement and assign the port to other operators, it said.
The VSPs, however, need to take BTRC permission for cancelling any IGW contract.
The BTRC directive came after the commission approved 1,004 VSP licences in January.
Among those, 844 applicants got licence that fulfilled the licence acquisition formalities in time.
According to BTRC officials, currently the country records around 4 crore minutes of international call everyday of which 1 crore minutes are routed illegally.
The government receives three cents from an international incoming call.
BTRC officials said the government awarded huge number of VSP licence to legalise the VoIP business with a view to increasing revenue.
A large number of licences were given under political consideration and many licensees don’t have enough technical support to run the business, they said.
-With New Age input
