There is no end in sight soon to the illegal VoIP business, as putting in place a central monitoring system is facing a tender imbroglio.
The government invited tenders for appointing a firm for doing the job. But the bid evaluation process could not be completed in due time for reasons best known to the authorities.
Sources said a vested quarter was hatching a conspiracy to foil the initiative taken by the telecom regulator recently to appoint a firm for doing the monitoring. The vested quarter was doing it to continue with the booming illegal VoIP business in the country.
The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) invited proposals from local and international firms having joint ventures with local entities on setting up the 'Centralised Monitoring System' (CMS) for ensuring the international call volume analysis and illegal VoIP control.
By the May 15 deadline five bidders submitted their proposals to monitor the international call volume which comes through the International Gateway (IGW) operators.
A seven-member technical committee - three from the BTRC and the others from the telecom ministry, Bangladesh Telecommunication Company Ltd (BTCL) and Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC)-was formed to evaluate the proposals.
But the telecom ministry failed to nominate its representatives on the evaluation committee leaving implementation of the project uncertain, sources said.
When contacted, a high official of the ministry said so far his ministry could not select any person to represent it on the evaluation committee that would assess the proposals. But when asked, he could not give the reason.
The official said since the issue was very important, the telecom minister and the telecom secretary needed to look into the matter.
According to the PPR 2008, the technical evaluation in the case of any complicated tender process has to be completed in four weeks.
As per tender schedule, the financial documents will be opened today (June 15) on completion of technical evaluation.
Chief Technical Officer of Fiber@Home Suman Ahmed Sabir told the FE that there must be sincere efforts to curb illegal VoIP. Without it, nothing could stop it, he added.
Industry insiders said vested quarters were trying to foil implementation of the project by influencing the telecom ministry.
They suspected that foreign companies might be appointed and that could lead to leaks of important information overseas.
According to data, around 140 million VoIP calls are made to the country every day. But the BTRC data shows this volume is fluctuating within 50 million. This means more than a half of the calls are made illegally.
As a result, the regulator has taken a number of initiatives to curb the illegal VoIP business.
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