International calls plummet 44pc

Incoming international calls through the legal channel have slumped about 44 percent due to a rise in illegal call termination and growing popularity of free mobile apps.

On an average, incoming international call minutes stood at less than 70 million minutes a day, down from last year's 125 million minutes, said Shahjahan Mahmood, chairman of Bangladesh Telecommuni-cation Regulatory Commission, yesterday.

This is causing the government huge losses in revenue every day, he said while talking to a group of journalists at his office.

“We have taken zero tolerance against illegal call termination,” Mahmood said, adding that different measures were taken to curb it. At the same time, his team is working out the impact free mobile apps had on international calls.

“Definitely, mobile applications impact the call volume but we have no idea by how much. We need to measure it.”

Not only Bangladesh, every other country in the world saw their voice call volumes drop as a result of mobile apps.

“But we have no plans to block the free mobile apps,” he said, while calling for a clear-cut guideline on over-the-top (OTT) services from the revenue sharing perspective.

OTT is where a telecom service provider delivers one or more services across an IP network.

Incoming international voice calls declined 11.03 percent to 3,158.32 crore minutes in fiscal 2015-16, according to the BTRC's annual report, as free mobile apps like Viber, WhatsApp and Skype are fast becoming the chosen medium for communication.

The total outgoing international call minutes stood at 27.83 crore last fiscal year, down 16.85 percent year-on-year. Not only for international communication, people in Bangladesh are now using the free apps to make local calls as well.  “But we will never do anything that creates problems for telecom users,” he added.