The government kept popular Internet calling and messaging services Viber and Tango blocked from early yesterday until late last night on security grounds.
At the same time, the government also kept third generation (3G) mobile data services suspended for 11 hours out of the same concern, sources from several mobile operators said.
Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) Secretary Md Sarowar Alam told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday afternoon: “The commission made the decision upon requests from the law enforcement and intelligence agencies.”
He also confirmed that it was a short-term decision and therefore will not be continued for a long time.
Sources said the BTRC has recently got a letter from a high profile intelligence agency which warned that militants are using different modern services with the help of 3G.
“Terrorist groups, militants and anti-state elements are carrying out terror and subversive activities using the facilities of communication devices such as mobile phones and Internet technologies such as Viber, Skype, Tango and WhatsApp,” the letter reads.
Copies of the letter, sent to the BTRC in the last week of December, were sent to the state ministers for home and ICT asking them to take necessary actions. The BTRC however denied receiving any such letter.
Political sources claimed that the move could be a measure to check street violence during the ongoing non-stop countrywide blockade enforced by the BNP-led 20-party combine.
They said several top political leaders have recently been using Viber instead of mobile phone voice call services for communication because the software cannot be tapped.
When contacted, State Minister for ICT Junaid Ahmed Palak also denied receiving any such letter; but said he was in favour of the observation that mobile phone apps were being used for planning subversive activities.
“There is no doubt that popular voice and non-voice services are not being monitored and hence they are threats for the nation because they can be used to promote militant attacks,” Palak told the Dhaka Tribune.
The government kept popular video-sharing website YouTube blocked from September 2012 to June 2013 following the emergence of an anti-Islam clip on the cyber surface.
In 2013, they government tried to put in place a monitoring system for popular social media platforms Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter and Linkedin but failed.
On Saturday night, BTRC sent an e-mail to the six mobile phone, three wi-max, all International Gateway (IGW) and International Internet Gateways (IIG) operators in the county requesting them to block the two free voice and messaging services.
The Dhaka Tribune obtained a copy of the letter which was sent from the System and Service Division of the BTRC and signed an by an assistant director.
“I am directed to instruct you to kindly stop the Viber and Tango services in your network from 0001 hrs of 18th January 2015 till 1800 hrs of 18th January 2015,” the letter reads.
The BTRC, in a subsequent communication, asked operators to extend the restriction timing to 11:59pm yesterday.
After sending the e-mail, a BTRC team visited several offices to monitor whether the operators had complied with the directive.
Robi said they had done everything possible from their end to blocked Viber and Tango but it was very tough for an operator to fully block these “over the top” (OTT) services.
“Mobile operators are trying to block these two services; but technically, it is very difficult for them to block these services on their networks,” AKM Morshed, chief technology officer of Robi, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday morning.
Morshed also said although they had blocked Viber and Tango on their networks, people were still using them on personal and local wi-fi networks and hotspots.
Grameenphone, the country’s leading mobile telecom operator, in a message on its website said sorry to its subscribers for not being able to provide the two services as per BTRC’s instruction.
Viber is an instant messaging and voice over internet protocol (VoIP) application for smartphones developed by Viber Media. It works on both 3G/4G and wi-fi networks and has over 280 million registered users out of which 100 million are regular, says Wikipedia. But there is no specific data on how many people use this app in Bangladesh.
Tango is a third-party cross-platform messaging application software for smartphones developed in 2009 that also offers video calls over both kinds of networks. It had more than 200 million registered users as of March 2014.
3G unofficially blocked
Although there was no official order from the authorities, mobile telecom operators were also requested to keep 3G services blocked from Sunday 1am to 12pm.
Operators said this was not the first time; they have done it several times in the past in different parts of the country upon requests from the telecom regulator BTRC.
“As our regulators are not capable of monitoring all the modern services, sometimes they request us to suspend specific services,” a senior official of a mobile operator told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
According to BTRC, Bangladesh now has over 10 million 3G users. State-owned mobile operator Teletalk first launched one of the world’s fastest wireless communication methods in October 2012.
