Several international gateway (IGW) operators have created a consortium to control all the incoming and outgoing international voice call termination in the country, in an alleged attempt to monopolise the market that is worth over a thousand crore taka.
According to their proposal, the major control of the market would belong to only six IGW operators – owned by politically influential people – that would be able to terminate calls and handle all outbound calls, while the rest of the operators would only be able to bring incoming calls in exchange for guaranteed revenue.
Around 18 IGW operators, out of the existing 29, formed the IGW Operator Forum (IOF) that placed a proposal last week before the BTRC for establishing a two-tier call termination process.
IOF ad hoc committee president AKM Shamsudoha told the Dhaka Tribune their proposal could be helpful for the gateway industry.
“We have placed our proposal to the telecom regulator and they will consider all the necessary aspect for the legal and other processes,” said Shamsudoha, who recently bought all the shares of Global Voice Telecom Limited and became the Chairman of the company.
A BTRC committee headed by Engineering and Operation Commissioner Saleh Ahmad Hakim has already met thrice to discuss the issue and is expected to submit its report within this week, sources said.
They added that a lobbying group linked with the IOF proposal was reportedly active to bring down international incoming call termination rate down 50% from 3 US cents ($0.03) to 1.5 US cents ($0.015) per minute.
Industry insiders said it would not benefit the consumers. If approved, the decision would give the IGW operators a chance to charge more than 1.5 US cents to foreign carrier but only sharing revenue with the government as per the declared value, they added.
Termination rate is when one telecom operator charges another for terminating calls on its network.
The lobbying groups are also allegedly being backed by some influential ministers who are working to convince the prime minister to approve the slashing of the rate by half.
Sources said an influential business tycoon with ties to the ruling party, who is the top boss of a leading business conglomerate of the country and allegedly has ownership in three IGW operators, was behind the move to cut the rates.
A senior BTRC official, seeking anonymity, told the Dhaka Tribune that if the rate is slashed, a group of operators would be able to make more than a thousand crore taka within only a couple of months.
Abu Saeed Khan, senior policy research fellow of Colombo-based ICT think-tank LIRNEasia, termed the IOF proposal “a syndication of corruption.”
He said: “Such a move directly contradicts the competition law of Bangladesh. Therefore any attempt to establish a syndicate of IGW operators is absolutely illegal.”
He also referred to the example of Pakistan where such a proposal had already been banned by the country’s highest court.
According to the IOF proposal, only a single tier (tier-2) containing six IGW operators would be able to terminate calls as they alone would stay connected with the Interconnection Exchange (ICX) and mobile and land-phone operators.
The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) would choose the six IGW operators, the proposal reads.
A separate tier (tier-1) containing the rest of the operators will only be able to bring incoming international calls and give that to the tier-2 to terminate.
Except for the six operators in tier-2, the rest will be in tier-1 and they will never allowed to handle outbound calls, the proposal of IOF said.
According to the proposal, the revenue sharing ratio between tier-1 and tier-2 operators will be 1:2.05. A market development fund would also be created as per the proposal, where each IGW operators will have to contribute around Tk3 crore every month.
The proposal also reads that the IGW operators will have a guaranteed quota of incoming international traffic as per their existing market share, which will help to curb illegal traffic.
“The big ones [operators] see big profit in the formation of IOF in two tiers. The small ones are quiet as the big ones assured them of providing a handsome guaranteed revenue,” a senior BTRC official told the Dhaka Tribune.
However, IGW operators that decided not to join the consortium protested the proposal. They have also sent a letter to the BTRC countering the IOF proposal.
Zahir Ahmed, managing director and CEO of Bangla Tel, an IGW operator that chose not to join the IOF, said: “There is no need to create another platform for IGW; only the BTRC can control the market if they are given the power to control it.”
Preferring to stay unnamed, a member of the BTRC committee on the issue told the Dhaka Tribune that the proposed policy was against the telecom act and the international long distance telecommunications services (ILDTS) policy, as the commission was responsible for ensuring fair competition in the telecom sector.
Currently, around six crore minutes of international incoming calls are terminated every day and IOF claims the number would jump if their proposal is accepted.
In 2008, the BTRC awarded four IGW licenses in a public auction, while later in 2012, the Awami League-led government awarded 25 more licenses.
