The parliamentary standing committee on telecom ministry on Tuesday witnessed a heated debate over a proposal to slash the rate of international incoming calls to 1.5 US cents from 3 US cents for gateway operators as some members backed the proposal despite opposition from the ministry. The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission in July sent a proposal to the telecom ministry to slash the call rate and government revenue sharing from international gateway operators in a bid to favour the new IGWs, mostly owned by people backed by the ruling party.
The ministry, however, opposed the BTRC proposal as it would cut down government revenue by Tk 1,073 crore.
The standing committee meeting sources said that the chairman of the body Md Abdus Sattar raised the issue and recommended reduction of the call termination rate as early as possible.
Telecom minister Sahara Khatun, secretary Md Abubakar Siddique and committee member ASM Firoz and some other members disagreed with the BTRC proposal at the meeting, they said.
Meeting sources said the BTRC chairman Sunil Kanti Bose was vocal about the proposal claiming that the move would help to lower the illegal VoIP calls.
Sources said that a heated debate took place as some members said why the issue was raised although it was not in the agenda and they also questioned why some members were trying to cause loss to the government exchequer by reducing call rate.
The committee, however, decided to recommend the ministry to cut the rates for three months on a test basis before taking a final decision.
According to the BTRC data, the country records around 55 million minutes of international incoming calls daily out of which 35 million minutes are disclosed to regulators.
The BTRC proposal also said the market turned dull because too many IGW licences had been issued and lowering the rates would make new IGWs sustainable.
BTRC had also proposed to lower the government revenue sharing to 40 per cent from the existing 51.75 per cent.
The BTRC in its proposal admitted that the proposed plan would slash the government revenue to Tk 777 crore from Tk 1,851 crore – the government’s annual income from IGW and ICX operators last year.
Only four companies were given licences through an auction when IGW service was introduced in Bangladesh in 2008.
The present Awami League-led government awarded 25 more licences – mostly to people linked to the ruling party although the then BTRC had proposed at best 10 more licences considering the market depth.
BTRC officials said because of issuing too many IGW licensed on political consideration, the market became volatile and the overall industry was running out of business.
They said most of the newly licensed IGWs were not able to pay the government dues and the BTRC was yet to realise Tk 275 crore from 10 IGWs who were blocked last week.
They said a group of IGW operators were lobbying with different government high-ups to pass the BTRC proposal.
‘So the entire move is initiated to facilitate the politically licensed IGWs at the cost of government revenue,’ a senior BTRC official told New Age.
The BTRC officials named some companies such as Roots Communications Ltd, First Communications Limited, Vision Tel Limited, Ratul Telecom Limited and Digicon Telecommunications Limited which, they said, had ‘strong links’ to the ruling party or its allies.
-With New Age input
