Five private mobile phone operators of the country submitted applications to participate in the 3G licensing process Monday with auctions scheduled for September 8.
The applicants tagged some conditions with the applications, submitted to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), regarding some unresolved issues.
The state-run Teletalk has already submitted its application to the regulator. The operator is in 3G operation in trial base from last year.
However, about the conditions, they said the main concern from the operators is about the more than Tk 3,000 crore claims by the tax administrator National Board of Revenue (NBR) from four operators — Grameenphone, Banglalink, Robi and Airtel, for SIM replacement.
NBR claimed that the operators resold the SIMs and did not pay tax amount.
The operators want the issue resolved before August 26, the deadline of submission of bid earnest money — $20 million for each operator.
A committee has been formed with the participation of representatives from NBR, BTRC, operator and AMTOB (Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh), to examine the claim.
TIM Nurul Kabir, secretary general of AMTOB, said, “We are working hard to resolve complete the SIM replacement issue within a very short time. Even we are working in the holidays also.”
The operator’s officials also said that the auction process is not resolved yet. BTRC will sit with the operators’ on August 19 for consultation the issue.
However, the government has already addressed two of its commitments by publishing orders earlier including no VAT (valued added tax) over 3G revenue for the next 15 years and 5 percent revenue over 3G spectrum charges.
Earlier the regulator revised the date auction twice after the requests from the government and the operators.
Source: The Daily Star
