The telecom regulator will soon ask the inactive landline operators to return their licences and spectrum if they fail to resume operations within a certain period.
The regulator took the decision last week as a huge amount of spectrum in different bands remains unused with the inactive private operators.The regulator will then allocate the spectrum for other purposes, said Sunil Kanti Bose, chairman of Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Comm-ission.
The operators also owe more than Tk 20 crore in total to the government in spectrum and annual licence fees.
Some of them have dues with the mobile phone operators too, Bose said.
Of 11 fixed phone or PSTN (public switched telephone network) operators, only two are active now — RanksTel, which provides nationwide services with 2.15 lakh subscribers, and BanglaPhone, which is operational in the northeast (Sylhet area) region with 5,430 subscribers.
Bose said, only one operator, RanksTel, is doing well, while the rest are either inactive or running improperly.
“If the operators do not show up within the stipulated time, their licences will be scrapped.”
However, the regulator, which has already reviewed the current situation of all the PSTN operators, is yet to decide how much time they will get to resume operations.
Bose said most of the operators are going through tough times and they hardly pay any charges to the government. “They don’t have any income but bear huge expenses,” he said.
The operators failed to meet their rollout obligations and so their licences can be revoked under the telecom law, the BTRC chief said, adding that there are some operators who did not launched services at all.
Bose also said some cases between the operators and the regulator are pending in courts.
The regulator issued eight private PSTN licences in 2004, seven in 2005 and four in 2007 in different spectrum bands such as 450 megahertz, 850 MHz, 1,800 MHz and 1,900 MHz.
However, eight licences were cancelled in 2007 and 2010 on various grounds — failure to launch services and meet rollout obligations on time, and illegal use of voice over internet protocol.
Abul K Shamsuddin, chief operating officer of RanksTel, said the regulator gave them a little spectrum. “It’s hard to offer quality services with such a small amount of spectrum,” he said, adding that their business will be more viable if they get more spectrum.
Amjad Khan, managing director of BanglaPhone, said they have a permission to offer services in the northeast region of the country, but as the government did not give them spectrum, they could not increase the number of their subscribers.
The sector is in a haphazard situation now and the regulator as well as the government should take care of it, he added.
-With The Daily Star input
