BTRC to bring int’l calls on single platform

Asks IGW operators to form clearing house for better monitoring
The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Authority has 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 from the 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 rate, 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), the call charges could not be less than approved tariff.
The ICH will have to take permission from the BTRC for installing the technical platform to establishing a central gateway for all international calls.
For smooth operation and better accountability the ICH would share a common point of interconnection with the IGWs.
The PoI would be located at state-run Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Ltd or any other suitable place proposed by the IGWs.
The PoI will have to be approved by the BTRC and the infrastructure sharing between IGWs and ICH will be according to the Infrastructure Sharing Guideline of the commission.
The ICH will maintain a call data recording analysing system at the BTRC which will be connected to the switching interface of each IGW to monitor the exact number and duration of calls processed.
Any IGW operator would be allowed to abstain from joining the ICH or exit from the ICH at any time with valid reason but it will have to participate in the monitoring terminal of the BTRC.
‘It is very difficult to monitor each of those international calls from BTEC as they have numerous entry and exit points,’ a senior BTRC official told New Age.
He said the BTRC took the move to bring all international calls to a single entry/exit point so that the commission could monitor those properly.
‘We often found that operators are offering less than government prescribed rate of 3 cents per minute. As they cannot show those calls in the record, the government revenue faces a huge setback,’ he said.
He said the BTRC, however, did not fix any deadline to setup the clearing house by the IGW operators.
‘The technical installation might take three months and the paper works would likely to take another two months,’ he said.
At present there are 29 IGW operators, 26 international exchange operators and 34 international internet gateway operators in the country.