BTRC set to issue VoIP licences by month-end

Jamal Uddin The telecom regulator is set to issue VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) licences by the end of this month to the companies which paid licence acquisition fees within the stipulated time. According to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), some 844 companies, out of the nominated 1,004 entities, will get licences for legal VoIP business. BTRC Director General (Legal and Licensing Division) AKM Shahiduzzaman said his department has already completed all necessary works for issuance of VoIP licence. "We are expecting to start the process of handing over licences to the finally selected companies by this month," he said. Another BTRC official told the FE that it needs more than one month to complete the total process of issuance of the licences. It is expected that following the issuance of the VoIP licences, the number of illegal VoIP calls will be reduced while the government revenue will be increased. Earlier, the BTRC issued letters to the 1,004 companies selected by the telecom ministry for the service for receiving VoIP licences after they submitted licence acquisition fee of Tk 0.5 million each by February 14. In the first phase 808 companies deposited their fees and then BTRC expanded the timeframe to February 28 for rest of the companies. In this time, more than 50 companies submitted the licence acquisition fee. At present the VoIP market size is nearly 70 million calls per day of which about 30 million are terminated in an illegal way, according to the data of the industry insiders. The regulator took initiative for issuance VoIP licence under the name of 'VoIP Service Provider (VSP)' in order to reduce the volume of illegal business that has increased alarmingly over the last few months. They said VoIP licence holders will work as the retailers for termination of international VoIP calls while International Gateway (IGW) operators will work as the wholesalers. According to the VSP guideline, some 45 per cent revenue of each VoIP call will be determined for the government, 13.25 per cent for IGW operators, 15 per cent for Interconnection Exchange (ICX), 20 per cent for Access Network Service (ANS) providers and rest of the portion for VSP operators. The government rate of a VoIP call is US$ 0.03 while the current gray market rate is less than $ 0.02.