Telecoms ministry plans to check illegal VoIP trade
The telecom ministry has taken a significant initiative to halve the call charge for the international incoming calls in a bid to whittle down the illegal VoIP business in the country.
The post and telecommunications ministry yesterday sent a proposal to the finance ministry for slashing the charge for international incoming call to 1.5 US cents per minute from the present 3 cents. The government is now loosing over TK 1,000 core annually to the illegal VOIP rackets but if the call rate is reduced, there will be a massive surge in international incoming calls through legal channels, a ministry official said justifying their proposal.
The move would help reduce the volume of illegal VoIP (voice over internet protocol) calls, telecommunications secretary Abu baker Siddique told The Independent yesterday.
However, he said, they have proposed for implementation of the decision on trail basis for the first six months.
“And, if found fruitful, we would continue with the new tariff chart,” he added.
According to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), the volume of international incoming calls is 70 million minutes per day, and only fifty per cent of these calls are made legally.
The telecommunications ministry believes that they could bring a significant portion of these illegal calls under a legal network, if the proposal is implemented.
Industry insiders pointed out that international gateways (IGWs) have long been demanding charge reduction as they are also deprived of huge revenue due to the illegal VoIP business.
As per BTRC rules, the government gets 51.75 per cent of the revenue from international incoming calls and 15 percent of it goes to interconnection exchanges (ICXs), 20 per cent to local telecom operators while the IGWs get 13.25 per cent.
BTRC issued 29 IGWs licenses and of them 10 IGWs operation have been suspended for there illegal activities and dues.
Earlier in 2008, the international incoming call charge was reduced to 3.5 cents from 6 cents, and it was again reduced to 3 cents in 2010.
The Anti-Corruption Commission in October last year filed a case against three top officials of Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited and an IT company owner on the charge of embezzlement of around Tk 32.7 million of BTCL through illegal Voice over Internet Protocol business.
According to BTRC estimates, the number of incoming international calls declined by 15 million each day from nearly 45 million in March 2010 causing a daily revenue loss worth Tk 100 million. And some foreign carriers owe more than Tk 10 billion to BTCL on account of incoming foreign calls from abroad.
Several operators just disappeared and the regulators and other relevant agencies have been pointing fingers primarily at the cell phone companies for all the wrongs in VoIP business.
In an estimate made in 2008, the government was losing around Tk 1200 crore revenue per year due to international call termination through illegal VoIP.
Most of the cell phone operators in the country were also found directly on indirectly involved in illegal VoIP trade in various probes carried out by the government.
Courtesy of The Independent
