Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission will establish a central monitoring unit to analyse international calls for curbing illegal voice over internet protocol business.
The new unit will have latest software with fraud detection system and measurement of revenue losses by analysing routes and call traffic variation.The BTRC on Tuesday called for application from the vendors to purchase software for the new system.
The BTRC recently provided 844 new licences for operating the VoIP business with a condition that each International Gateway service operator can serve 35 licensees at a time.
According to BTRC officials, currently the country records around 4 crore minutes of international calls everyday of which 1 crore minutes are routed illegally.
The government receives three cents from an international incoming call.
In a recent move, the BTRC directed the international gateway operators to form a clearing house in a bid to curb illegal international call termination and unhealthy competition among the service providers.
The BTRC in a directive asked the IGW operators to form a central platform for routing the international calls
to monitor them properly.
The BTRC directive came following a recent trend of decreasing international call volume and offering of low rates in international calls other than the prescribed rates, it said.
The proposed International Clearing House would have a memorandum of understanding with the IGWs to ensure that the termination rate, which is 3 cents per minute, remains regulated.
The BTRC directive also said that irrespective of any promotion, any package, timing (off peak) and the call charges could not be less than approved tariff.
BTRC officials said hundreds of individuals, small cartels and companies are involved in illegal VoIP business across the country which causes a huge loss to government revenue.
In many cases, these illegal VoIP service providers have political connections and also government officials concerned were involved in such business, they said.
At present there are 29 IGW operators, 26 international exchange operators and 34 international internet gateway operators in the country.
-With New Age input
