Telecom Lead Asia: Bangladesh Telecommunications
Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has awarded three different types of licences to
78 companies to operate in Bangladesh.
“The telecom operators have some call-sharing issues with the companies
that have just got the licences. We will sit with everyone to resolve the
issues,” said BTRC Chairman Zia Ahmed.
The existing operators and BTRC itself have been opposing the government move
to allow so many companies in the telecoms sector, saying this would upset the
balance in the telecommunication market.
Recently, telecommunications ministry finalized a list of 85 licence seekers.
Of them, 78 companies paid the licence fees until Wednesday.
22 organizations got licences for International Gateway (IGW), as many received
licences for Interconnection Exchanges (ICX) and 34 organizations were given
International Internet Gateways (IIG) licence, according to a report in bdnews24.com.
According to the regulations, the organizations paid Tk 150 million each for an
IGW licence, Tk 50 million for ICX licence and Tk 0.5 million for IIG licence.
They will have to start operations six months into getting the licences.
Only nine organizations have been providing these services until now. On Oct 20
last year, BTRC published an advertisement inviting applications from
interested organizations and153 organizations applied on December 8.
BTRC rated these applicants and submitted a report to the telecommunications
ministry in February. However, the regulators opposed giving out so many
licences.
Telecoms secretary Sunil Kanti Bose said after screening the numbers of the
organisations would go down and so there will no risk of the market losing its
stability.
However, the ministry finalized 85 names to give conditional licences. BTRC
appealed for a re-evaluation but was declined.
Bangladesh telecom market achieves 86.55 million mobile
subscribers till September 2011
Bangladesh, one of the major telecom markets in the Asia
Pacific region, has achieved about 86.55 million mobile subscribers at the end
of September 2011, representing a net addition of 4.728 million from the
previous quarter.
Research and Markets said Grameenphone’s subscriber base
increased to 35.24 million from 33.82 million in June 2011. Grameenphone’s
blended ARPU fell to BDT257 from BDT270 over the same period.
editor@telecomlead.com
