Shamim Ahamed
Senior Correspondent
Dhaka, Nov 1 (bdnews24.com)—The Ministry of Post and Telecommunications and Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission are preparing for finalising the number of VoIP service providers by December.
The telecom regulator will complete evaluating the applications of the local entrepreneurs for licence authorisation in the beginning of December and after that the ministry will prepare the final list within days.
BTRC Chairman Sunil Kanti Bose told bdnews24.com on Thursday that they would complete evaluating the applications either at the end of November or at the beginning of December and then send those to the ministry.
The former Telecom Secretary said the licences are expected to be finalised in two weeks after sending the applications to the ministry, which will determine how many will be issued.
“The licences are likely to be issued early January,” he said.
A senior official at the BTRC’s Legal and Licensing Department told bdnews24.com that the applications were being evaluated on a ‘grade basis’ and incomplete applications were being rejected for not having necessary documents.
The telecom regulator posted the final VoIP guideline and licence application notice on its website on July 22, inviting applications for much-talked about VoIP licence to stop illegal call transmission, legalise the business and encourage the local entrepreneurs to invest more in the telecommunication sector.
The licence will be issued under the name of “VoIP service Provider (VSP)”, it had said. However, the guideline did not mention how many licences would be provided for this telecom business.
The government took the initiative of issuing Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) licence last year to stop illegal VoIP business, which has been causing huge revenue losses every year.
About 1,500 entrepreneurs applied for VoIP business licence by the deadline that expired on Oct 14.
In the current guideline, the application fee for VSP has been fixed at Tk 5,000, licence fee at Tk 500,000 and annual renewal licence fee at Tk 100,000.
Firms receiving the licence will have to channel 10 percent of their income to government exchequer.
According to the BTRC, the legal average daily international calls amount to nearly 30 million minutes while 10 million minutes of calls are made through illegal channel for which the government incurs Tk 50 million in revenue losses every day.
The government now gets three cents from each international incoming call.
According to the BTRC statistics, Bangladesh receives around 55-60 million minutes VoIP calls a day of which more than 10 million minutes calls are made through illegal channel.
The government receives three cents from each international call as per the country’s telecommunications act, but due to illegal VoIP, it is deprived of almost Tk 8.0 billion each year.
Source: bdnews24
