The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has initiated a move to introduce revenue sharing for the internet service providers which have spectrum allocation.
At present 11 ISP operators have around 75MHz of spectrum allocation, mostly in 3500MHz band, but those only pay licence renewal fees to the BTRC, telecom officials said on Wednesday.
As the ISPs have spectrum allocation their revenue sharing should be done under spectrum pricing method, they sad.
They also said such valuable national resource should be maintained with due importance.
‘We are finalising a proposal to charge ISP operators as per spectrum pricing model as some of the ISPs have spectrum allocation,’ a senior BTRC official told New Age.
He said initially the spectrum was provided to the ISPs without cost to facilitate the industry.
‘Now after certain time, when the industry reached to a maturity, we are thinking the issue with different perspective,’ he said.
He said the proposal would soon be placed before the commission for approval.
‘The revenue sharing for the ISPs will be similar to annual spectrum charge model for the mobile phone companies,’ he added.
According to the BTRC 3G Cellular Mobile Phone Services Regulatory and Licensing Guideline 2013, the annual spectrum charges will be calculated under a formula where each tariff unit will be Tk 70.
The tariff unit will be multiplied by some components of the formula to set the annual spectrum charges.
‘We are not yet informed about any such move by the regulator,’ said Internet Service Providers Association Bangladesh’s immediate past vice-president Sumon Ahmed when asked about the issue.
He said the BTRC move would be challenging for the industry.
‘We hold very limited amount of spectrum individually and many of us are not using the spectrum profitably,’ he added.
-With New Age input
