Teletalk owes Tk. 1694 crore 73 lakh; Postal Department has no call center
Bangladesh is exporting bandwidth to Border States of neighboring India. Meanwhile, Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL) is currently exporting 20 Gbps internet bandwidth to Tripura through India’s state-owned company Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL).
Posts and Telecommunications Minister Mustafa Jabbar also presented the account of the government’s debt to the four mobile operators by giving this information during the question and answer session in the Parliament on Tuesday (February 7).
He said that the state-owned mobile operator company Teletalk Bangladesh Limited owes Tk. 1,694 crore 73 lakhs to the government. Similarly, the closed private mobile operator Citycell owes Tk. 1286 crore 98 thousand 323 to the government.
The Minister of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology gave this information in response to the question of Member of Parliament of Kushtia-1 Constituency AKM Sarwar Jahan in the Jatiya Sangsad.
Speaker Shireen Sharmin Chowdhury presided over the question and answer session, In response to the ruling party member of parliament M. Abdul Latif’s written question, the minister’s written reply said that an agreement regarding IP transit lease with neighboring India was signed on June 6, 2015. As per the agreement, 10 Gbps bandwidth is initially leased from Bangladesh for the North Eastern provinces of India. Also, on March 23, 2016, the Prime Ministers of Bangladesh and India announced the auspicious opening of the leasing program through video conferencing. BSCCL is currently exporting 20 Gbps internet bandwidth to India’s state-owned company Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) in Tripura, India.
In response to the question of Kushtia-1 Constituency Member of Parliament AKM Sarwar Jahan, the Minister also said that out of the amount of money owed to Teletalk, Tk. 1,585,130,000 is for 3G spectrum assignment fee. In addition, spectrum charge is 27 crore 15 lakh, revenue share is 33 crore 79 lakh and SOF is 48 crore 66 lakh. And to the government, the Grameenphone owes 10 thousand 579 crore 94 lakh 76 thousand 135 taka, Robi Axiata owes 729 crore 23 lakh 91 thousand 476 crore to the government. The Banglalink owes Tk. 273 crore 25 lakh 41 thousand 292 for the 2nd installment of spectrum allotted in 2021 auction and down payment of 2022 spectrum auction to the government.
In response to the question of Mohammad Habib Hasan, another member of parliament from the ruling party, Mustafa Jabbar said that the number of organizations with business process outsourcing or call center registration certificate issued by BTRC under the post and telecommunication department till December 31 is 179. The number of operational call centers is 68. Among them, 45 are international call centers and 23 are internal call centers.
The Posts and Telecommunications Minister said that there is no call center in the conventional sense of the Department of Posts, and the government has no plan to convert the country’s post offices into call centers for now. Adequate and skilled manpower is required to set up such call centers in all post offices. Also the name and telephone number of information officer of each unit of postal department is given on the website.
