The High Court on Sunday asked the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission and the government to explain in 15 days the legality of the latest broadband wireless access service licence awarded to Ollo. The HC bench of Justice Mirza Hussain Haider and Justice Muhammad Khurshid Alam Sarkar issued the rule after hearing a public interest litigation filed by a lawyer Omar Farouq.
The commission recently awarded the license to BIEL, a subsidiary of Russian company Multinet.
BIEL is providing internet services in partnership with New Generation Graphics Limited under the brand name Ollo.
The petitioner’s counsel Aneek R Haque told New Age that the writ petition was filed as the licence was issued to BIEL in violation of the law and without any auction.
The commission cannot provide broadband wireless access service licence without an auction, he said.
Moving the writ petition, the counsel argued that BIEL recently applied to the commission seeking a licence for WiMax operation based on their participation in the 2008 WiMax auction.
After the filing of the application, the commission amended the broadband wireless access service licensing guideline in a bid to favour the BIEL as the existing guideline barred the telecom regulator from issuing a WiMax licence to BIE, he contended.
In the latest amendments to the licensing guideline a reference — BTRC/LL/BWA(407)BIEL/Part-1/2013-996 — was mentioned which proved that the process of the amendment was initiated following a BIEL document, Aneek argued.
Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh recently protested against the changes made to the licensing guideline as it allowed Wimax operators to provide long term evaluation service, a data transfer technology faster than 3G.
The association said that the mobile operators recently bought 3G and LTE spectrum licence by $21 million per MHz while the Wimax operators are getting the LTE service permission at much lesser cost.
-With New Age input
