There are at least four lakh satellite channel subscribers in Dhaka city. According to the Dhaka City Corporation, there are more than a hundred cable operators in the city but only twenty-two of them have licenses. These illegal operators have been in business for the last decade or so. Their nature of work means that the government is being deprived of a large amount in revenue every year.

There are no specific laws in cable business. That is why the situation is always chaotic. Distributors and operators for their own convenience fix the rate of subscription and raise it whenever the please.

The president of Cable Operators Association of Bangladesh (COAB) Mir-e-Akter claims that they have to increase the subscription because the number and cost of pay-channels have gone up and with it the rate of VAT too. But none of cable operators are showing more than 8-10 pay-channels despite taking an increased amount of money from the residents. There are as many as 33 pay-channels available for the city's subscribers.

Abul Khair Litu, the chairman of Nation Wide Communication, one of the two channel distributors of the city, argued that the operators were violating the rights of subscribers. " As VAT they pay less then Tk 60-100 per month. Only the operators of Gulshan and Baridhara pay in the region of Tk 140. Besides, the operators regularly earn extra money from illegal connections but they don't share this with the distributors."

Although the Ministry of Information, Ministry of Industry and Commerce, Bangladesh Bank, Bangladesh Television (BTV), National Board of Revenue, DCC etc. all are connected in some capacity or the other with the cable industry, there is no coordination between these establishments.

Taking advantage of this confusion, unscrupulous operators are continuing to deprive the subscribers of proper service.