Internet Safety Solution
BTRC to float tender for third time
The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has decided to float fresh tender for the third time for internet safety solution as the Central Procurement Technical Unit, a government body for public procurement, raised objection about the ongoing process, said officials concerned. CPTU officials said the BTRC violated the Public Procurement Rules while forming the evaluation committee to hire a firm for the internet safety solution.
They said the evaluation committee must have two outside members but the BTRC did not comply with the rules.
Later the telecom regulator added two outside members in the evaluation committee but that led to breaching the rule for exceeding the maximum number of committee members, they said.
‘There are some other concerns about the process of ISS installation, so we have decided to float fresh tender,’ a senior official of BTRC told New Age recently.
The BTRC earlier floated tender twice for the internet safety solution.
BTRC officials said there were heavy lobby by the companies that participated in the bidding for the job.
They said the commission initially decided to purchase the equipment for the internet safety itself and float the first tender but later it changed the decision and went for hiring a firm for the service.
A BTRC committee, which was assigned to speed up the process of safety solution purchase, suggested that hiring a firm would cost less as the BTRC did not have to spend huge amount of money at a time.
The BTRC on April 8, 2013 called for IT firms to set up a solution at the entry points of internet, especially the international internet gateways, to keep country’s web space safe.
The BTRC says the internet safety solution will keep free the internet from materials sensitive to the national unity and solidarity, derogatory contents to religious belief, obscene or indecent contents and morally inappropriate matters.
The telecom regulator’s move came after some anti-Islamic content in some blogs were brought into public attention by media in February 2013 which instigated violence across the country, they said.
After the system comes into operation, the BTRC will be able to filter specific content of a web site without interrupting the users to carry their regular works, the officials said.
-With New Age input
