World Tel Bangladesh Limited, the country’s first landline operator, may lose its operating licence as the company, the regulator says, is involved with illegal call termination activities.
At a recent meeting, Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission made a decision to issue show-cause notice against the company before cancelling its licence.
Licence cancellation would, however, depend on the reply, the meeting sources said. If the reply was not satisfactory or event there was no reply from the company, the regulator would go hard-line and cancel licence, they added.
Earlier, the BTRC had also taken a decision to scrap the spectrum allocated for the World Tel due to its “illegal operations.”
The operator’s licence, awarded in 1994, was first in the country’s private sector land-line service while the World Tel was allocated spectrum of 1800 MHz band.
BTRC had given that spectrum without taking any fee in return. According to the current price, the minimum value of the 1800 MHz is nearly TK2,000 crore.
The regulator had issued several notices before against the company’s illegal call termination. But the company repeatedly rejected the allegations of illegal call termination.
A BTRC official also alleged that after getting licence from the regulator, the World Tel had not submitted any bank guarantee performance.
The company even had not paid any licence renewal fee worth Tk2 crore in the past four years, he said.
In response to a BTRC letter in August, the World Tel said: “Our top management is currently out of the country. We shall need another 2-3 weeks to properly respond to the letter.”
“In the meantime we assure that we are always obliged and willing to settle any outstanding issues that we have as an operator.”
The company also alleged that the BTRC had halted its operational activities without any prior notice, and after that “we couldn’t get back to the right track.”
