Unregistered cellphones cut off from today

A large number of unregistered mobile phone subscribers crowd a sales centre of TeleTalk in Dhaka as the re-registration deadline expired yesterday.Photo: Amran Hossain

Up to a million mobile phone subscribers are facing the prospect of having their lines cut off as they failed to re-register their phones before yesterday's deadline.
The mobile phone operators will start disconnecting the un-registered phones from today and will send the phone numbers to the regulator, said Manzurul Alam, chairman of Bangladesh Telecommuni-cation and Regulatory Commission (BTRC).
The snapped connections can only be restored after re-registration if operators provide satisfactory reasons for missing the deadline, Alam said.
According to estimates by operators, around 90 percent of 10 million mobile phone subscribers who were supposed to re-register had completed the process by yesterday.
The telecom regulator however suspects that there have been some fake re-registrations and the BTRC will verify every customer's profile.
Alam said, "We will verify every re-registered customer."
Earlier in August last year BTRC issued an order to Grameenphone, AKTEL, Banglalink, Citycell and TeleTalk to re-register customers who bought connections before February 28, 2006. And then the BTRC had to extend the deadline four times.
"We took all the necessary initiatives to make the re-registration process a success," said Syed Yamin Bakht, director (public relation) of Grameenphone.
BTRC in March said of the 3 million unregistered clients until March this year, 2.7 million use Grameenphone connections.
BTRC chief also spoke about the newly introduced penalty system for selling SIM cards without registration.
He also said the existing amount of fine of $10 for selling an unauthorized SIM card could be increased if the operators do not comply with the due process.
According to the latest figures released by the BTRC, up to April 2008, the number of total mobile phone subscribers reached 40.34 million.
Grameenphone is the market leader in mobile telecommunication sector with around 18.60 million subscribers, while Orascom Telecom Bangladesh, which operates Banglalink, is the second leader with around 8.64 million subscribers.
Telecom Malaysia International Bangladesh, which operates AKTEL, and Warid Telecom International are the third and fourth market player with around 7.57 million and around 2.93 million subscribers respectively.
Pacific Bangladesh Telecom Ltd, which operates Citycell, and the state-run Teletalk Bangladesh are the other two operators.