Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) is going to introduce a pre-paid payment system soon for the international gateways (IGW) as a good number of operators have so far failed to pay their outstanding bills in the last six months.
To ensure proper realisation of the bills from the international termination calls, the telecom operator will take the crucial decision at a meeting to be held today at BTRC office in the capital, according to BTRC sources. Engineering and operations division of BTRC has already proposed three different slabs for different call termination limits.
According to the proposal, IGWs will have to pay a deposit worth Tk10 crore as pre-paid balance against 10 lakh minutes per day, Tk30 crore against 30 lakh minutes per day while Tk50 crore for up to 50 lakh minutes termination volume.
The governmenthad earlier proposed the BTRC to introduce this prepaid system for enhancing its due revenue collection from the telecom sector.
As per the existing guideline, the IGWs share 51.75% of their revenues from incoming international calls with the government. Meanwhile, some nine operators have already gone out of the service as they failed to share their revenues worth Tk600 crores, which still remains pending as dues.
BTRC high official said: The IGWs are currently providing ‘performance bank guarantees’ for operating their international calls. But troubles begin when the dues exceed the guarantee.
“As the IGWs need to bear various costs to run their own business, the matter will have to be examined carefully before introducing a pre-paid payment system for them,” said a high official of Engineering and Operations division.