The posts and telecommunications ministry sees no justification of the telecom regulator’s proposal to lower the international incoming calls to 1.5 cents from existing 3 cents for international gateway operators.
The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission in July sent a proposal to the telecom ministry to slash the call rate and government revenue sharing from IGW operators in a bid to favour the politically licensed IGWs.
If the government endorsed the proposal then it would lose Tk 1,073 crore in revenues every year.
‘We are not endorsing the proposal as we found no justification of it,’ telecom secretary Md Abubaker Siddiqi told New Age on Wednesday.
He said as it is a financial related matter, the opinion of finance division of the finance ministry is required.
‘But we have done our own analysis and MoPT does not agree with the proposal,’ he said.
BTRC officials said the politically licensed IGWs are pressurising the ministry and lobbying with other government high-official to get the proposal passed.
They said a section of IGW operators met the telecom minister Shahara Khatun on Tuesday to press their demand.
According to the BTRC proposal the country records around 55 million minutes of international incoming calls daily out of which 35 million minutes are disclosed to regulators.
The proposal also said the market turned dull because too many IGW licences had been issued and lowering the rates would make new IGWs sustainable.
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.
The regulator had proposed at best 10 more licences, but the government last year awarded 25 IGW, 23 ICX and 34 IIG licences raising the number of gateway licences to 91.
The 25 new IGW licences could hardly increase the revenue, said BTRC officials.
They also said around Tk 900 crore in licence renewal fees from the IGW operators was due but could not be realised because of ‘political influence’.
The new IGW licensees have ‘political backing’ and they care little about the relevant laws, the officials alleged.
They 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.
The BTRC officials said the companies were asked several times to explain violation of rules and their not sharing the revenues but nothing happened because of their ‘political connections’.
-With New Age input
