The telecom regulator has served show-cause notice to mobile phone operator CityCell stating why its licence should not be cancelled after the failure to pay Tk255.3 crore dues.
Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) issued the notice under the Bangladesh Telecommunication Act asking the operator to reply in 30 days.
“We sent the showcase letter to Citycell as it has failed to pay its dues to BTRC,” said Md Abdus Samad, the regulator’s legal commissioner.
But CityCell said they had not received the notice yet.
“We got the news from journalists, but are yet to receive the notice,” Mehbub Chowdhury, chief executive officer of Citycell, told the Dhaka Tribune over phone yesterday.
BTRC said it had issued five letters from December last year to Citycell for the payment of outstanding fees but got no response.
Of total Tk255.3 crore dues, 2G licence renewal fee amounts to Tk229 crore and social obligation fee Tk4.78 crore. The remaining part has arisen from revenue sharing payment from March last year.
CItycell sources said they had already discussed the matter and the operator was ready to pay the outstanding fees without 2G spectrum fee.
According to them, Citycell never received full of the spectrum BTRC had allocated to them. That’s why they will not pay full money for it. “Though we were allocated 10 Megahertz (of spectrum, we got 6.5 Megahertz in two years,” said a senior official.