The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has imposed administrative fines of Tk 7.65 crore on four mobile operators for their involvement in VoIP. Teletalk has faced the highest fine. The state-owned operator has been fined Tk. 5 crore. Private mobile operators facing the second highest fine and they have to deposit Tk. 2 crore in the state treasury. For the same reason, Grameenphone has been fined Tk. 50 lakh and Banglalink Tk. 15 lakh.
The BTRC has sent instructions to the chief executive officer of the operators to pay the fine within 30th instant. As per the directive signed by BTRC Secretary Nurul Hafeez, the administrative fine has been imposed under Section 65 of the Telecommunications Control Act 2001 against the seams seized from various establishments as part of regular operations against illegal VoIP.
According to sources, the fine was imposed at a hearing chaired by BTRC chairman Shyam Sunder Sikder. The meeting was attended by Brigadier General Ehsanul Kabir, Director General, Engineering and Operations, BTRC; and MA Taleb Hossain, Director, Directorate of Enforcement and Inspection.
On the other hand, their representatives were present on behalf of the operators. During the hearing, Teletalk was fined a total of Tk. 73.83 lakh against 32,845 SIMs seized in two phases for violating the commission’s instructions and licensing conditions.
However, if the application for waiver of the fine is applied in two phases, the fine was reduced to Tk 5 crore after review.
Earlier last year, an investigation report by the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC) revealed that Teletalk was offering illegal VoIP business opportunities in various ways. It has come to the notice of BTRC that retailers are selling huge amount of SIMs without any sort of verification with the help of the concerned department of the company.
The BTRC then said that a retailer of the state-owned mobile phone operator Teletalk had registered 14 SIMs (customer identification numbers) in the name of a customer in just 24 hours. Except 1, the numbers of the remaining 13 SIMs are of the same serial. A SIM was registered at 3:16 pm. SIMs have been used in illegal VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) business.
