The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission on Thursday blocked operations of 10 international gateway operators for their outstanding dues of Tk 275 crore.
BTRC officials said the commission earlier set September 25 deadline for the IGW operators to pay their dues. Five out of 15 operators paid their dues in time.Of the blocked IGW operators two companies — Vision Telecom and Ratul Telecom — hold dues of around Tk 150 crore.
The other eight IGW operators —Apple Network Ltd, Ranks Tel, Moss Fivetel Limited, SM Communications, Venus Telecom, Sigma Engineers Ltd, Fast Communications and
One Asia Alliance — have around more than Tk 100 crore dues to the BTRC, said officials.
They said some of these blocked IGW operators faced similar punishment before in the same ground but later they were permitted to run the business because of their connection with ruling party politicians.
Some powerful ruling party leaders have already started lobbying the high government authorities to cancel the BTRC’s latest decision, they said.
They also said a section of BTRC officials were favouring the IGW operators which got licences on political consideration for their personal gains.
The BTRC in July sent a proposal to the telecommunication ministry to slash the call rate and government revenue sharing from IGW operators.
The telecom regulator proposed to lower the international incoming calls to 1.5 cents from existing 3 cents and lower the revenue sharing for international gateway operators.
If the government endorses the proposal, it would lose Tk 1,073 crore in revenues every year.
According to the BTRC data, the country records around 55 million
minutes of international incoming calls daily out of which 35 million minutes are legal.
The present Awami League-led government awarded 25 more IGW licences – mostly to people linked with the ruling party.
The BTRC had proposed at best 10 more licences, but the government last year awarded 25 IGW, 23 ICX and 34 IIG licences raising the number of gateway licences to 91.
The 25 new IGW licences could hardly increase the revenue, said BTRC officials.
They said the companies were asked several times to explain violation of rules by them and they were not sharing revenues.
-With New Age input
