BTTB revenue shot up on VoIP drive

The ongoing drive against illegal VoIP operation has resulted in a record jump of overseas telephone calls through the Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB) system, statistics show.
The BTTB is now handling more than 12 million minutes of overseas calls per day as against around four million minutes of calls per day last year. Such a jump however is mainly due to incoming calls.
Overseas calls through the "legal" or BTTB channel started to mark a significant upward trend from January this year and rose to the highest number of around 14 million minutes of calls a day during the recent Eid vacation.
This is considered significant because illegal VoIP ( Voice over Internet Protocol) operation had long been depriving the government of huge revenue, and the BTTB's overseas revenue earning was consistently nose-diving during the period.
It is estimated that operators were bagging Tk 15,000 crore a year through illegal overseas telephony using VoIP technology while the BTTB's earning from overseas calls was just around Tk 200 crore last year.
"We believe that revenue from overseas calls alone would increase by three times. We will get a clearer picture about this within a short time," says BTTB General Manager for Security and Surveillance Lt Col Zia Safdar.
BTTB records show that it handled 22.8 crore minutes of incoming overseas calls and 2.9 crore minutes of outgoing calls in August this year. During the corresponding period last year, it handled 8.3 crore incoming and two crore outgoing calls.
Again, only in eight months till August this year, the BTTB handled about 120 crore minutes of incoming calls and 19 crore minutes of outgoing calls. In contrast, it dealt with 90 crore minutes of incoming and 23 crore minutes of outgoing calls last year.
Outgoing calls are not increasing significantly because call rates are generally perceived as very high. Besides, people in general prefer to receive overseas calls than make overseas calls, telecom experts say.
Overseas calls have become a major business in Bangladesh since the late nineties mainly due to the VoIP technology that was being used without giving the government any tax or duty.
A powerful section of people involved in this business did not want the use of this technology to have legitimacy to evade taxes and duties. Bangladesh Telecom Regulatory Commission (BTRC) had played a questionable role in this regard. Consequently, overseas calls in the gray markets became so cheap that Bangladesh became one of the fastest growing overseas call markets.
Overseas calls were marking an increase in the official channel of the BTTB as well mainly because of drastic cut of such call rates. While in 2001, the BTTB handled 28 crore minutes of incoming and four crore minutes of outgoing calls, it dealt with 66 crore minutes of incoming and 21 crore minutes of outgoing calls in 2005. In 2006, incoming calls shot up to 90 crore minutes and outgoing 23 crore minutes.
Yet, unfortunately BTTB's earning from overseas calls had declined significantly between 2001 and 2006 because of the reduction of call rates. BTTB's earning from foreign calls dropped by Tk 135 crore in 2005-06 from that in 2001-02.
But this year's trend is phenomenal. Telecom experts however say there is still an untapped gray market. Quoting their international telecom intelligence, they say outgoing and incoming overseas calls in Bangladesh equal a stunning 70 million minutes per day.
The BTTB now has agreements with 42 operators worldwide while it does not have any deal with operators in many European countries. Among the operators, STC of Saudi Arabia handles the maximum overseas calls (6.4 crore minutes incoming calls in August) with Bangladesh as that country hosts more than 14 lakh Bangladeshi immigrant workers. It is followed by KDD of Japan (2.3 crore minutes in August), Etisalat of the UAE (2.1 crore minutes in August), BT of UK (2.1 crore minutes in August), Sing-Tel of Singapore (1.4 crore minutes), and five US companies handled about two crore minutes of calls in August.
Since January this year, the anti-VoIP operation drive spearheaded by Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) has detected dozens of illegal operators and exposed that even the phone companies, including mobile phone operators, were involved in the racket one way or another.