The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has backtracked from its earlier decision to cancel licences of two international gateway (IGW) operators -- Ratul Telecom and Kay Telecom -- over the payment they owe the regulator, officials said.
"We've taken the decision to make sure that the defaulting gateway operators don't escape," said Sarwar Alam, Secretary of the BTRC.
Presently, over Tk 2.0 billion dues have been lying outstanding with the two gateway operators and they don't give reply to the regulator's letters and inquiries.
He said cancellation of the operating licence might help the operators escape from the regulator's punitive measures as the existing dues of the operators will exceed their deposited money.
"We have taken legal measures under the public demand recovery (PDR) Act to recover the long pending dues of the operators," he said adding that the owners of the operators might lose their movable and immovable assets.
The official said besides, the BTRC also decided to form a committee to analyse the impact of cancellation of the licences and the chance to realise the money through the action.
"We have taken cautious measures to deal with the two companies," Mr Alam said and added that the existing dues are much more than that of the deposited money of the telephony firms.
The Kay Telecommunication which is out of contact since late 2013, owes the BTRC nearly Tk 0.78 billion. Failing to recover the dues from the operator, BTRC took recourse to legal procedure.
Besides, On May 20 last year, the commission published an open notice through media asking the company to reply within ten days since the date of publication of the notice, but the operator has not responded yet.
Apart from Ratul and Kay, there were some other IGW operators --Bestec, SM Communication, Vision Tel and Telex Limited -- who owe the government Tk 5.23 billion in revenue sharing and all the six operators are now out of service.
Because of the non-payment of dues, the regulator in September last year blocked operation of 10 IGW operators but later allowed four of them to continue the services as they started paying their dues in instalments.
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