 |  |  |
The government on Wednesday announced its International Long Distance Telecommunication Services Policy-2010, enhancing the powers of the telecommunications ministry.
At the same time, the new policy curbed the powers of Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission in issuing licences and fixing the tariffs.
The new policy, said officials, vested the telecommunication ministry with the authority to issue and renew licences, approve services and fix the tariff, the telecom operators could charge.
Under it, the ministry would issue international gateway licences for handling international calls.
It empowers the ministry to bring under the legal framework, the VoIP firms operating illegally.
It withdrew the powers to revise and amend licencing conditions from BTRC and vested them with the ministry.
Under it, the tariff structure for voice and data services would henceforth be formulated by the ministry.
It empowers the ministry to fix time bound tariff structures with a provision of periodic review.
The policy requires channelling all financial transactions through the scheduled banks of the country.
The cabinet recently approved the amendments to the telecommunication law and international long distance telecommunications services policy.
The ministry officials said that henceforth BTRC will process the licensing activities and the ministry will give the approval to the operators.
Industry insiders said that they could not understand how the telecommunication ministry will handle the complicated licencing and tariff matters, in a highly competitive market.
BTRC chairman major general (retd) Zia Ahmed said that whatever the government did would for the good of the sector.
Approximately, 60 million minutes of incoming and outgoing international calls are made from Bangladesh each day, said BTRC officials.
Illegal VoIP handlers route around 40 per cent of the calls.
No comments:
Post a Comment