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Unregistered cellphone booths doing brisk business

NOVERA DEEPITA
The phone-fax shops in the city are running cellphone call business without registration with the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC).
There is no fixed rate of their call charges. The mushrooming business falls under no specific rules of the BTRC, but there is a law on registration.
A BTRC official, who preferred anonymity, said: “There are laws for registration of such phone booths but those have never been implemented. The Commission never took any initiative to bring the cellphone booths under registration process.”
Asked if the BTRC itself is violating its own rules and regu-
lations, he said the implementation has not been possible due to lack of manpower.
When contacted, AKM Shahiduzzaman, director of Legal and Licence Department of the BTRC, refused to comment on the matter, saying that the BTRC officials do not have the permission to talk to journalists.
The existing law restricts the use of telecommunication system for commercial purpose without permission of the BTRC.
Bangladesh Telecommunications Act 2001 said: “An operator shall not, without a permit issued by the Commission, accord permission to any other person or allow him, on commercial basis or in lieu of fees, price or other consideration, to use his telecommunication system or any installation or apparatus or facility by which telecommunication services can be provided.”
This law is applicable for all sorts of telecommunications systems used for commercial purpose.
Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB) and Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) have no specific statistics about the number of phone-fax shops in the city.
Although these shops are supposed to be controlled by these two authorities, they have so far paid no attention to this matter.
On the other hand, the shop owners are ignorant about of the law.
Abu Khaled, trade licence inspector of Dhaka-5 zone of the DCC, said: “All public call centres
must have licence and pay Tk 1,025 per cellphone to run commercial service. But most traders neither apply for licence nor pay the tax.”
Most of these businessmen either do not know the rules or deny that they need to have a trade licence to run the business. “I have licence for the T&T land phones but I do not need any licence for the cell phone,” said Mahbub, a phone-fax shop owner.
In a commercial area like Nilkhet or Aziz Super Market, one can find different types of shops offering public call service. Apart from phone-fax shops, the department stores and even betel-leaf vendors have cellphones for commercial use.
A city corporation official requesting anonymity said: “There is no rule to control the tariff these traders are charging from their customers. The operators themselves decide how much to charge for per unit call on a cellular phone.”
In most cases the shop owners fix it according to the rate of the cellphone companies they subscribe to. The call rates at the public call centres range from Tk 2-10 per minute.
The rate differs from one shop to another. In the busy area of Natun Rasta in Jigatola, there are more than a dozen shops and their rates differ from Tk 2-5.
“In Motijheel, no mobile phone shop charges below Tk 6. Many of these shops are running business with weak network or other service problems that often snaps the connection forcing the customer to call
again,” said Khaled Bin Waleed, a student.
Mahbub, owner of a phonefax shop in Dhanmondi, said when he started his business earlier this year, the call rate was double the present tariff. He said: “Now I charge Tk 4 per minute. My profit from a single mobile phone is not more than Tk 100 a day.”
The mobile phone companies of the country have no restrictions on using cellphones for commercial purposes. The subscribers can use their phones for any purpose they like.
However, the cellphone service providers said the phone shops subscribing to them do not need any licence or legal document from the service providers concerned to run a business with the phone.