At present, there are about 182 BTRC approved Telecommunication Value Added Service (TVAS) providers. The BTRC has already launched an investigation against 11 service providers on various charges, including deducting money and launching unnecessary services without the knowledge of the customer. Apart from investigating the allegations, the regulator has also found evidence of non-payment of BTRC revenue. At the same time, the inspection team found evidence of allegations against some of these organizations. In all, BTRC has received 9 types of irregularities.
Some of these organizations were not found at their registered addresses. Some of them did not have their own Monitoring Terminal / Online Monitoring system. There is evidence of irregularities such as deducting money by activating the TVAS service without the knowledge of the customer, not launching the OTP and setting up the server without an infrastructure sharing agreement with a third party.
The BTRC says that legal action is being taken against the companies from the commission soon and such inspection activities will be continued. Administrative fines have already been imposed on Win Miyaki Ltd., Miyaki Media Ltd. and Binbit Mobile Entertainment Ltd. Legal action is being taken against the other companies as well.
However, the names of those companies have not been revealed yet.
According to sources, the list of accused includes SSD Tech, Purple Digit Communication Limited, The Avi Kathachitra Limited, JoyCalls Bangladesh Limited, Four DL Bangladesh Limited, Gak Media Limited, Azra Technologies Limited and BTM Technologies.
The full form of TVAS is the Telecommunication Value Added Service. Customers of the mobile phone operator are known as contemporary news alerts, welcome tunes, songs, wallpapers, videos, various information (agriculture, health, education, religion, etc.), lifestyle, mobile phone games, background music, etc.
Short-range TVAS services were introduced in Bangladesh in 2010. However, due to the huge increase in its use by 2017, guidelines were issued by the BTRC for the issuance of TVAS registration certificates and from that time the issuance of TVAS registration certificates was started.
TVAS providers provide TVAS services to mobile phone subscribers through shortcodes, SMS, IVR, WAP, mobile apps through agreements signed with four mobile phone operators. In return for the service, the mobile phone operators receive a portion of the money due from the customers as per the executed contract. In addition, in the case of TVAS, there is an obligation to deposit 8.5% of the total revenue earned in the BTRC / Government treasury.
