The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has blocked all calls from Telex Limited, an International Gateway (IGW) operator owned by a ruling party leader,after the company failed to pay its dues in revenue sharing for October last year.
At the same time, the telecom regulator decided to limit services of seventeen other operators for their failure to pay dues on time. The 23 IGW operators were asked to deposit dues of around Tk5bn by 26 August. Only five operators deposited a total of Tk1.13bn within the deadline, according to BTRC officials.
BTRC sources said Telex will not be allowed to handle any calls until its dues of around Tk400m are paid.
Meanwhile, BTRC put caps on seventeen operators’ services- thirteen of them will be asked to limit their calls to around one million minutes per day while four others will be asked to limit calls to around three million minutes per day.
The Telecom watchdog said their total outstanding dues from various gateway operators now stood at Tk9.91bn. It has prepared a report which will be released in the meeting of the parliamentary standing committee on the Post and Telecommunication Ministry
According to the report, in the 2012-13 fiscal year BTRC took Tk9.21bn from the IGW’s, whereas their outstanding amount is Tk6.82bn.
The report also claimed Interconnection Exchanges (ICX) had total dues over Tk4.67bn. BTRC can collect Tk1.9b and the remaining Tk2.77b is outstanding.
Meanwhile, private land phone operators (PSTN) have Tk314m outstanding, International Internet Gateways have Tk15.7m outstanding for 2012-13, and ITC operator’s dues totalled Tk5m.
“Though these figures are from the last fiscal year, during the last two months the total amount outstanding dues increased by more than a billion,” a high-ranking official at the BTRC told the Dhaka Tribune.
