BTRC to prioritise tech expansion over revenue

The telecom watchdog will now focus more on extending information and communication sector rather than putting an extra effort to bag handsome revenues every year.
Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has also planned to bring changes to the policies, formulated earlier, if it finds that any of those policies are helping market monopoly.
"I don't think an extra effort is needed to earn revenue. I believe, if we work for extending technologies to the mass, revenue will shoot up naturally," Zia Ahmed, the newly appointed BTRC chairman, said yesterday at a press meet.
The revenue of BTRC in financial year 2007-08 was almost 485 times higher than the revenue (Tk 3.45 crore) at the time of its formation in 2001. Its revenue in fiscal year 2007-08 was Tk 1,677.85 crore, also three times higher than earlier year's Tk 565.61 crore.
Ahmed said the commission has so far earned Tk 2,200 crore and is hopeful about reaching the target of Tk 2,500 crore set for the current fiscal year.
The higher revenue earnings in fiscal year 2007-08 were silently criticised by the market operators because of the commission's aggressive drive of getting handsome revenue by introducing more technologies within a short span. A good portion of the revenue in 2007-08 came from illegal VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) operation fine.
However the telecom watchdog's main sources of earning are licence acquisition fees for new technologies and yearly licence fees from the operators.
Talking about bringing changes to the earlier policies, he said: "We feel that there are some bottlenecks in the International Long Distance Telecommunication Services (ILDTS) policy. We are now working on that and may amend it in the next parliamentary session."
About the bottlenecks in ILDTS policy, the BTRC chairman said in some cases the policy does not allow multiple technologies for one operator and sometimes it also restricts many operators in a single service.
"We are likely to remove those restrictions," Ahmed said, adding that more companies will come and the chance for monopolisation will go.
When asked about the increased trend of illegal VoIP operations in the recent times, he said BTRC is monitoring the Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) and continuing the anti-VoIP drive.
The commission is also thinking to fix a rational international call termination rate so the grey market's users migrate to the legal channel.
The legal platform of the international call handlers now charges 4 cents per minute, which ranges from 2.5 cents to 3.0 cents in the illegal market.
The BTRC chairman said: "We will sit with all the stakeholders to revise the international call tariff."
Ahmed said the BTRC will continue the steps the last commission had taken for the betterment of the telecom sector.