Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has tightened payment rules for the international gateway operators by adding a clause to realise call tariff dues from performance bank guarantee. BTRC officials said the move came after the telecom regulator faced severe criticism from the government and the parliamentary standing committee for telecom ministry for its failure to realise the dues form IGW operators.
BTRC on September 26 blocked operation of 10 international gateway operators for their outstanding dues of Tk 275 crore.
BTRC last week amended the IGW guideline where it reduced the revenue sharing time for the IGW operators to bi-months basis from previous quarterly basis where the payment has to be made in first 20 days after each deadline.
The BTRC amendment also said from now on, in case of failure in payment, the late fee payment time will be 30 days after the deadline which was earlier 60 days.
The IGW operators also have to keep 50 per cent of the performance bank guarantee or an amount necessary with the BTRC for payment of dues for call tariff proceeds, said the latest amendment.
The BTRC will block or reduce the capacity of the IGWs until the payment is not clear and will cancel the license after the amount of dues exceed the deposited performance bank guarantee, it said.
According to BTRC data until September 26, two IGW 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 in dues to the BTRC, said officials.
They said some of these blocked IGW operators faced similar punishment before on 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 with 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.
-With New Age input
