3 telecom entities to come under single umbrella

The government has decided to run its three telecommunication entities under a single umbrella aiming to make them more competitive by lowering operating costs.
These three entities are Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited (BTCL), Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Ltd (BSCCL) and the state-run mobile operator TeleTalk.
Under the government's plan, the BSCCL will be merged with BTCL, while TeleTalk will become its subsidiary company, Rajiuddin Ahmed Raju, minister for posts and telecommunications, told The Daily Star yesterday by phone.
The new move has been initiated just 10 months after transforming the Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board into two separate entities --BTCL for handling landline operation and BSCCL for handling the country's lone undersea cable.
BTCL and BSCCL were formally launched in July 2008 at the initiative of the immediate past caretaker government.
“A secretary level committee already completed primary work for the possible merger of the three entities," said the telecom minister, adding that a bill on the new company formation is expected to be placed in the next session of parliament.
Stressing a strong chain of command for the new company, Raju said, "And therefore, if we merge the three, we can ensure the utilisation of the human resources as well."
Earlier, the existence of BTCL came under question, as a parliamentary standing committee on the telecommunication ministry raised doubt over the transparency in the process of transforming the BTTB into a public limited company.
There are allegations that the telecom ministry and BTCL officials failed to table details of the transformation process before the parliamentary body when the parliament was in a session, which recently prorogued.
Up to June 2008, Tk1,560 crore was the annual revenue earning of BTTB, which handled undersea cable and land phone business.. After abolishing the BTTB, revenue of the BTCL stood at Tk800 crore in six months to December last year, while BSCCL revenue was not over Tk 30 crore during the period.
According to an assessment conducted by the last caretaker government during BTTB's separation, the BTCL and BSCCL were valued at Tk 15,000 crore and Tk 1,000 crore respectively.
BTCL, the largest landline operator among 12 companies in the market, has eight lakh landline customers. On the other hand, TeleTalk, which was a BTTB mobile project at the very beginning but separated from the state-run telecom board as a single entity in 2005, has only 0.93 million customers as of February 2009.
TeleTalk has been in severe financial constraint since its inception.
"If TeleTalk runs as a BTCL subsidiary, it will get an extra value to be more competitive," said a high official of the company.
The minister said after being a separate company for handling submarine cable, the BTCL has to buy bandwidth from BSCCL. Therefore, the government entity (BTCL) has to spend huge amount of money.
BTCL officials echoed the minister on the issue of a single umbrella saying that the BTCL will be financially gainer in case of BSCCL-BTCL merger.