Annual licence fee waived for VoIP service providers

The country's VoIP Service Providers (VSP) are going to get exemption of annual licence fee following a recent move of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC).
The regulator sent a proposal to the finance ministry through telecom ministry to allow waiver of the annual licence fees to the operators as most of them could not come into operation after getting licence last year.
Sources said the finance ministry accepted the proposal of the BTRC and granted licence fee exemption to the VSP operators last week. The ministry also reduced revenue sharing from 10 per cent to 5 per cent for the operators.
As result of the move by the regulator, the government will be deprived of Tk 80 million as annual licence fee from the VSP operators.
Bangladesh Association of VoIP Service Providers (BAVSP) General Secretary Engr. Khondoker Romel said this decision will be helpful for them, but the authority should facilitate them to reduce dependency on International Gateway (IGW) operators.
 "We want to be 'Facility Based Operator' (FBO) to be self sufficient to terminate international call," he told the FE.
But at this stage this licencees have to depend on the IGW operators.
BTRC issued a total of 844 VSP licences in March 2013 taking licence fee of Tk 0.5 million each. According the VSP guideline, the operator was supposed to pay Tk 0.1 million each as annual licence fee.
Sources said BTRC took the initiative at the request of the BAVSP.
Recently the VSP organisation mentioned in a letter sent to the BTRC that "Our research indicates that 60 per cent of the VoIP traffic is going through grey operators, which is more than 45 million minutes per day. If VSPs are made FBOs and allowed to compete with the grey operator's price point, it will definitely eliminate them completely."The organisation also mentioned it had found that a significant number of the grey operators acquired the VSP license. These operators will definitely switch to legal operation once this is made viable."This illegal VoIP is not only destroying the VPSs, it has already destroyed ISPs, PSTNs, Call Centres and it is on its way to destroy IGWs and IPTSPs," the organisation said in the letter.