Khairul Islam
Country's telecom regulator is going to investigate the allegations of illegal VoIP (voice over internet protocol) business by the state-run mobile operator Teletalk.
A committee comprising representatives from the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), International Gateway (IGW), Inter Connection Exchange (ICX) and mobile phone operators will look into the matter, sources at the regulator said.
The telecom watchdog has taken the initiative following the allegations from three leading mobile operators of illegal VoIP call terminations by the Teletalk.
On receipt of the accusations, the watchdog already sent two letters to the Teletalk giving advice to fully implement the self-regulation policy to detect VoIP call. Currently, the private telecom operators are following the self- regulation policy set by the BTRC.
Recently, the operators -- Grameenphone, Banglalink and Robi -- lodged the allegations with the telecom watchdog saying that Teletalk's SIMs (subscriber identification module) are being used for illegal call termination with a high magnitude.
"Sub-committee to protect telecommunication related illegal activities in the country will probe into the allegations of the grey-market business by the state-owned company as soon as possible", a top official at the BTRC said requesting anonymity.
The official told the FE that in addition, the sub-committee will also investigate into allegations against other accused telecom operators that are allegedly involved with the illicit business.
"There is also allegation of such illegal businesses against other than state-owned telecom company", the official added.
"In addition, the BTRC is also planning to enhance its monitoring over the telecom operators to check the grey-market business that deprives the government of huge revenue earnings", the official said.
According to the data provided by the three operators, around 38,613 SIMs of Teletalk were used for illegal call termination just in one month which is from May 28 to June 27 while 511 SIMs were detected from Banglalink, 6,080 SIMs from Airtel, 1217 SIMs from Robi and 472 SIMs from GP.
They said the BTRC is already aware of such termination of grey traffic that causes not only revenue losses for the multinational operators but also for the government as well as other stakeholders like ICX and IGW operators.
Statistics available with the BTRC, average volume of the legal VoIP call terminations in the current month is nearly 50 million minutes every day. However, as per the data of international carrier, the country terminates around 114 million calls a day.
