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BTRC urges ministry to rethink plan for 85 gateway licences

Abdullah Mamun
The telecom regulator has requested the telecom ministry to reconsider its decision to give 85 new licences for international call transferring gateways, internet gateways and interconnection exchanges.
The situation in the telecom sector will no longer be stable if the proposed number of licences is issued, said Zia Ahmed, chairman of Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC).
A letter was sent to the ministry Thursday.
BTRC predicts that the large number of new entrants will complicate connectivity among operators.
The telecom ministry has approved 85 new licences — 25 for international gateways (IGWs), 21 for interconnection exchanges (ICXs) and 39 for international internet gateways (IIGs) — and sent the list to the regulator on Wednesday to issue the licences.
The IGWs deal with overseas call transferring, while the ICXs offer interconnectivity service to telecom operators and IIGs supply bandwidth to internet service providers.
The BTRC chairman told The Daily Star on Thursday that the Bangladesh telecom market does not support 85 new licences and they will not be able to make business. Nine such licence holders
already exist in the market, he said.
He said according to guidelines, all the telecom operators will have to connect with the new licence holders, and that will become too cumbersome.
Moreover, he said around 4.5 crore international call minutes will be daily distributed among the IGWs that will not be a viable business for them.
Telecom Minister Rajiuddin Ahmed Raju said the ministry approved the issue of 85 new licences to be transparent and imperial.
"We want to make a competitive market. Those who will do good will survive and the poor performers will phase out," he said. A total of 153 applications were placed for the licences. Three BTRC evaluation committees examined the applications and sent the list to the ministry, highlight -ing the evaluation marks, said a BTRC official.
Sunil Kanti Bose, telecom secretary, said according to the BTRC evaluation, the ministry has made the approvals.
In cases where entities applied for more than one licence, they will be given only one. So ultimately the number will be slashed down, he said.
An applicant later has an opportunity to not accept a licence, and the application money will also be returned.
When the new licensees will begin operations, illegal call termination will be cut down and calls through the legal channel will grow, which will help do better business, said the secretary.