Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has taken initiatives to develop a new roadmap for a two-year period to devise a strategy on how the upcoming licences, directives and auctions would be held.
The move aims at graphing the future of the telecom market.
Officials said the regulatory commission has already formed a committee, headed by Brig Gen Md Ahsan Habib Khan, director general of BTRC spectrum management division, to prepare the draft of the roadmap.
They had decided forming the committee on March 31 commission meeting. The committee has not been formed until yesterday.
High officials of post and telecommunications ministry, all the four director generals of BTRC and senior officials of state-owned Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited would be the members of the committee, which will hold meetings with the stakeholders and industry experts to discuss issues in formulating the roadmap.
“As we aim for a digital Bangladesh, there has to be a roadmap, especially for spectrum and new licences,” BTRC Chairman Sunil Kanti Bose told the Dhaka Tribune recently. “This is to facilitate entrepreneurs in the industry to prepare their future business and investment plans.”
The roadmap for the next two years will provide information on which licences will be introduced in the telecom industry, what guidelines and directives will be issued and when will the spectrum auctions be held, so that the entrepreneurs could set their action plans.
Meanwhile, BTRC has announced the 3G auction schedule to be held on July 31 this year.
“We think the roadmap is important for the betterment of the telecom industry. Many mobile phone operators have also been demanding for a long term roadmap,” BTRC Secretary Md Mahboob Ahmed said.
“It’ll be the second roadmap to be prepared by BTRC,” he said. The first was formulated in 2008, consisting of 20 action plans.
“The plan of developing a roadmap is a very good incentive from the regulator’s side and it will help the market become more mature and take proper decisions without difficulty,” said Michael Kuehner, chairmanof the Association of Mobile Telephone Operators of Bangladesh and the chief executive officer of Robi.