23rd Working Group Meeting of SATRC is underway in Dhaka

The two-day meeting of the South Asian Telecommunication Regulators' Working Group on Policy, Regulation and Services will conclude on Thursday, May 26th at Hotel Intercontinental in the capital. The meeting discussed important policies and regulatory issues related to the telecommunication and information technology sector of SATRC member states. The meeting was inaugurated by BTRC Chairman Shyam Sundar Sikder. BTRC Vice-Chairman Subrata Roy Maitra and Director General of Systems and Services Brigadier General Md. Nasim Parvez were present at the inaugural function. The meeting was attended by two delegates each from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Nepal and one each from India and Iran. A total of 35 members including representatives of affiliated Axiata Group Barhad, Telenor Asia, Banglalink Digital Communications Ltd., Grameenphone Ltd. and Robi Axiata Ltd. also participated in the meeting. In his inaugural address, the Chairman of the BTRC called upon the experts of the Working Group to present at the Council meeting of the SATRC the duties assigned to the Working Group on Policy, Regulation and Services. A total of three issues have been approved for review by the Working Group on Policy, Regulation and Services at the 22nd SATRC Council Meeting held in November 2021. (1) Development of enabling policy and regulatory environments, in the context of SATRC, to embrace the new ecosystem brought by 5G (2) Telecom active infrastructure sharing (3) Regulatory issues related to OTT services and applications. At the inaugural function, Mudassar Naveed, Chairman of the Working Group and Director General of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, thanked BTRC for organizing the meeting in Bangladesh. Touhid Hossain, Program Coordinator, Asia-Pacific Telecommunication (APT) also addressed the meeting. The meeting is being organized by Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) and supervised by Asia-Pacific Telecommunication (APT). Earlier, BTRC chairman Shyam Sundar Sikder was elected chairman of the South Asian Telecommunications Regulatory Council for 2023 at the 22nd meeting of the SATRC held on November 1-3 last year.