The telecom regulator is revising the rules and market condition of the VoIP Service Providers (VSPs) as around half of them are out of business, said officials.
Officials of Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission said as the government issued huge number of licenses without considering the market need, the overall market became dry.
The government in January 2013 issued 844 VSP licenses to discourage illegal voice over internet protocol business.
In May 2013, the BTRC in a directive to International Gateway services asked them to serve 35 VSP operators under revenue sharing model.
‘There is no official data on how many VSP operators are in active business but considering the revenue sharing with the IGWs the number will not be more than 450-500,’ a BTRC official told New Age.
‘All the IGWs don’t have the same capacity and when everyone has to share the same number of VSP operators then it’s a problem for them,’ he said.
Another BTRC official said that the commission is currently analysing the VSP regulations again to update it according to market need.
‘We are at the initial stage and after further analysing we will able to know what kind of changes should be made in the related regulations,’ he said.
He said the objective of the government to allow huge number of VSP licenses largely remained unsuccessful as it failed to reduce the illegal VoIP business.
‘And on the other hand, lot of people took the licenses without proper knowledge about the market as the fees were minimum,’ he said.
He said the IGW operators themselves were having dry business because of increased competition.
The government in 2012 gave 25 new IGW licenses, ignoring the BTRC proposal for giving 10 licenses, to favour ruling party backed businessmen.
According to BTRC data, the legal call terminations were 1,732 crore minutes in 2013 and 1,342 crore minutes in 2012.
-With New Age input
