Bangladesh shuts three phone operators for illegal telephony ,in less than a week for allegedly running unlicenced phone services, a spokesman of the telecom regulatory body said on Friday.The Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission closed the offices of Ranks Telecom Ltd, or RanksTel, a private firm licensed in 2004 as a public switched telephone network (PSTN), as the government was convinced that the operator runs an illegal business using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), for which it is not licenced.
“We have shut down all activities of RanksTel since Friday morning after we found a huge quantity of VoIP equipment at the company’s office,” BTRC chairman Zia Ahmed said, adding that three employees had also been detained.
On Wednesday, authorities discovered evidence of illegal VoIP operations at the offices of WorldTel Bangladesh Ltd, which has been running PSTN operations since 2000. The phone operator was also switched off, the BRTC chairman said.
Five top officials of Dhaka Phone, another PSTN operator, were arrested Monday on a similar charge. The company’s operations were suspended.
There are nine private operators running PSTN services across Bangladesh beside the state-run Bangladesh Telecom Ltd, providing service to some 1.6 million subscribers.
RANKSTEL’S STATEMENT
RanksTel termed shutting down of its switch room totally illegal.
“The BTRC investigation team and law enforcers did not find any VoIP equipment, yet they sealed our switch room, which is only preventing the development of the local telecom industry,” said the RanksTel statement signed by Director Aman Ullah Chowdhury.
Shutting down RanksTel’s network will cause sufferings to its customers and destroy its image. “We want a neutral investigation into the matter and demand that the regulator opens the switch room immediately,” the statement said.
Operations of the telecom company at 22 call centres, UNDP, City Bank, American Express Bank, Standard Chartered Bank offices here also got closed.
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