Teletalk yet to block its 20 lakh unregistered SIMs
State-owned mobile operator Teletalk is yet to block 20 lakh of its biometrically unregistered connections, which is allowing a huge volume of illegal international incoming calls and depriving the government of revenue.
In two different drives in the last two months, Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission found a huge number of Teletalk SIMs that were used in illegal call termination.
BTRC seized 9,130 SIMs, of which 6,662 were Teletalk. The number of Grameenphone SIMs was 1,405, Airtel 387, Robi 338 and Banglalink 100.
State Minister for Telecom Tarana Halim in a meeting on Thursday directed BTRC to take action against Teletalk even though it is a state-owned company.
Md Faizur Rahman Chowdhury, chairman of the Teletalk board and the telecom secretary, also requested the regulator to fine Teletalk for all illegal activities, just like the other operators.
"Institutionally, we want to help Teletalk and we want to give them the support they need, but we can't tolerate any illegal activity," Chowdhury told The Daily Star.
Citing security reasons, the government had earlier announced that unregistered subscribers would have to be disconnected after May 31.
But its own carrier continues to allow unauthorised connections.
In May, Teletalk had 44.63 lakh subscribers and only about 22 lakh were re-registered before the deadline. Unregistered but active Teletalk SIMs are now being used to receive illegal international calls, industry insiders said.
The regulator on several occasions wanted to know from Teletalk the number of SIMs it has blocked, but the operator did not give any reply.
BTRC sent a letter last on August 14, asking for a reply within ten days.
In April, the regulator imposed a fine of Tk 50.24 lakh on Teletalk for 1,256 SIMs that were being used to terminate illegal calls. But the operator is yet to pay the amount.
Teletalk was fined several times for the same reason but it never paid fine, although the private operators paid their fines within the deadline.
In another move, from August 13 to 20, the regulator detected the use of 15,230 SIMs in illegal call termination.
Of them, 7 were from Banglalink, 75 from Robi, 20 from Grameenphone, one from Airtel and 126 from an internet protocol telephony service provider -- Idea Networks and Communications Ltd.
The rest 15,001 SIMs or 98.49 percent of the total were from Teletalk.
Most of these SIMs were either illegal or with fake registration, according to a report of SIGOS, a German-based telecom company.
BTRC has been taking help from SIGOS since 2008 to detect SIMs that carry international calls illegally. The report also said, on August 20, SIGOS detected 4,184 calls terminated through 3,993 SIMs.
Despite several attempts, The Daily Star could not reach Gias Uddin Ahmed, managing director of Teletalk, for his comments.
Earlier, he acknowledged failure to block unregistered SIMs. "Institutionally, we are not supporting illegal call termination."
The rate for every minute of international call termination is $0.015, of which the regulator gets 40 percent.
In June, the average incoming call minutes stood at around 7.73 crore a day. It was around 7.74 crore minutes in May, 7.88 crore in April, 7.99 crore in March and 8.06 crore in February, according to BTRC.
After the completion of the biometric re-registration process, the volume of legal incoming calls marked a rise and now stands at around 8.1 crore minutes a day. This number could have been higher if the regulator could bring Teletalk under their regulation, said a top official of a private mobile phone operator.
"When we started biometric verification in December last year the illegal VoIP traffic was 35 percent of the entire call volume. It came down to 12 percent in June when we completed the registration process. The latest data shows that the illegal VoIP traffic came down to 9 percent," said Tarana.
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