The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has backtracked from approving any service or tariff of the telecom operators without prior consent of the telecom ministry.
According to BTRC officials, since last week they have been only forwarding the service and tariff approval application to the telecom ministry following verbal instruction from the commission chairman.
‘Since last week we have not been giving service or tariff approvals. We are now only forwarding those to the ministry with recommendations,’ a BTRC official told New Age on Sunday.
According to Section 48 of Bangladesh Telecommunication (Amendment) Act 2010, the telecom ministry is the authority for such approvals where the BTRC can only make recommendation or observation while forwarding the applications to the ministry.
BTRC officials said the commission had been approving the services and tariff of different operators by its own violating the law since 2011.
They said in many cases the operators launched the commercial services on getting approval from the BTRC, although the ministry approvals were still pending.
‘The practice was initiated to speed up the approval process following a meeting between the BTRC and the
-With New Age input
