Palak instructed to apply ETSAF for stopping the sells of illegal and unregistered connections
According to data provided by Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), Bangladeshi domestic companies manufactured 23.3 million mobile phone sets last year. This is 26.35 percent less than the 31.7 million sets produced in 2022. According to the Mobile Phone Industry Owners Association of Bangladesh (MPIOAB), mobile phone sales decreased by 33 percent last year.
In this context, initiatives should be taken so that smart phones that enter the country illegally cannot be sold in the market and all the phones that are not registered could be stopped; besides a smarter registration process should be applied. This is what the state minister for Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology Zunaid Ahmed Palak has instructed.
The State Minister of Posts and Telecommunications also asked for the cooperation of Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh- AMTOB to launch the Electronic Telecommunication Subscriber Acquisition Form (ETSAF) by collecting information from BNDA Service BUS through Autofill. For this reason, State Minister Palak emphasized determining things to do necessarily within 48 hours of time limit.
This decision was announced by the state minister in a meeting held at the Conference Center of BTRC Building at Agaragaon on Tuesday.
Mentioning the directives of the Prime Minister, he suggested to take initiatives in order to increase employment and investment and increase export income from the ICT and telecom sector. In this case, local industry protection is a big issue. For that purpose, mobile assembling inside the country should be increased.
In a happy mood, while sharing views with the BTRC officials and employees, Zunaid Ahmed Palak said that, protection should be given to the 17 manufacturing companies in the country so that they can make bigger investments. Another 10 companies are also interested in investing. The phone sets produced domestically should be sold in the local market. We have to ensure that, no smuggled phones are being sold in Bangladesh market. That will increase our revenue. Local industries also will be protected and employment will be generated.
Addressing BTRC Chairman, DG and AMTOB in the meeting, he said that the mobile phone registration system should be made mandatory and the mobile phone operators should close those mobiles that are still under registration. There is no compromise in this regard. If anyone or any group wants to stop it, I will talk to the Prime Minister about them.
Seeking AMTOB's cooperation to facilitate data-based decision-making, he said, "We need to work quickly on the possible filling and verification and authentication of ETSAF." I hope you will give me solution and suggestion within next 48 hours.
BTRC Chairman Engineer Mohiuddin Ahmed presided over the meeting while AMTOB Secretary General and retired National Telecommunication Monitoring Center (NTMC) Director General Major General Mohammad Zulfikar (Retd.) Ziaul Ahsan; BACCO President Waheed Sharif and others were present in the meeting.
