Incoming int’l calls declined by 44pc: BTRC
Incoming international calls through legal channel have declined by around 44 percent compared to that of the middle of last year, said the chief of Bangladesh’s telecom regulator today.
Average incoming international calls came down to less than 70 million minutes from 125 million minutes in a day last year due to increase of illegal call termination and using of free mobile communication tools, said Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) Chairman Shahjahan Mahmood.
This has caused a huge loss to the government’s revenue every day, he said while talking to journalists at his office in Dhaka today.
“We have implemented a zero tolerance approach against the illegal call termination and have also taken different actions against those activities,” said Mahmood.
At the same time, a BTRC team is working to find out how mobile applications impacted the international calls, he added.
“Definitely mobile applications have impact on call volume but we are yet to have an idea about the volume. We need to measure it,” he said.
“No plan to block free communication apps”
However, the BTRC has no plan to block or restrict such applications, the regulator boss said.
“At present, we have no plan to block free mobile applications or OTT services,” Shahjahan Mahmood said.
“Currently we are not filling any guideline on free communication applications but definitely there needs to be a clear cut guideline on use of OTT services in terms of revenue share perspective,” he added.
Incoming international voice calls declined by 11.03 percent to 3,158.32 crore minutes in fiscal 2015-16, according to the BTRC’s annual report, as free mobile applications like Viber, WhatsApp and Skype are becoming the chosen medium for communication.
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