The country's leading mobile phone operators have lodged allegation to the telecom regulator about involvement of the state-run cell-phone company - Teletalk - in illegal VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) call termination.
The operators - Grameenphone (GP), Banglalink and Robi - complained that a large number of Teletalk's SIMs (subscriber identification module) are being used for illegal call termination.
The three telecom companies in a recent letter said the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC) is already aware of such illegal call termination.
It causes a substantial revenue loss to the multinational operators, the government and other stakeholders like ICX and IGW operators.
They sent the letter to the telecom ministry and Teletalk managing director.
The three operators presented some data of illegal VoIP business done by Teletalk in last several weeks. According to the data, around 38,613 SIMs of Teletalk were used for illegal call termination just in one month from May 28 to June 27, while 511 Banglalink SIMs, 6,080 Airtel SIMs, 1,217 Robi SIMs and 472 GP SIMs were found used for the same purpose.
The companies analyzed the data in two ways - through their respective detection and Meucci Solutions, an internationally recognized telecom service provider for VoIP call detection.
The operators said the government has taken various measures to reduce the size of grey market of illegal call termination, of which implementation of SIM Box Detection System, abnormal call detection through ICX operators and self-regulation are mentionable.
As per the BTRC's direction, the operators have set up a self-regulation process to reduce illegal international call. But the state-run operator is yet to set up such a system in their network to detect illegal VoIP calls, they alleged.
The leading operators urged the regulator to take steps for implementation of the self-regulation process by Teletalk.
