Slapping fine on mobile phone operators has been proposed for the SIM cards used for illegal Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service.
"We'll take a final decision on slapping fine for illegal VoIP action soon," Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) Chairman Zia Ahmed told on Monday after a meeting of the telecom regulator.
Bangladesh government currently does not offer VoIP licences. BTRC has sent a draft guideline to the telecom ministry for issuing licences to VoIP service providers.
VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol is a set of facilities for managing the delivery of voice information using the internet.
Asked about the amount of fine per SIM card used for illegal VoIP service, the commission chairman said they would sit later to fix the amount.
Why mobile phone operators
Ahmed said every SIM card has to be sold after registration in line with the law.
"But this law is not followed many a time," he said.
"It will be possible to prevent illegal VoIP service up to a certain extent if SIM cards are sold after proper registration," he added.
BTRC officials said around one million SIM cards were closed in drives against VoIP in the past three years. Of them, BTRC closed around 600,000 while the operators closed the rest.
"Illegal VoIP service will decrease if the operators strengthen monitoring. Besides, they will become more alert if we fine them," Ahmed said.
Bangladesh has six mobile phone operators - Grameenphone, Banglalink, Airtel, Robi, Citycell and state-owned Teletalk.
According to the BTRC, the average daily legal international calls were of around 35 million minutes in April. The amount had been over 50 million minutes previously, BTRC officials said. Every international call gets $0.3 for Bangladesh, according to them.
"We'll take a final decision on slapping fine for illegal VoIP action soon," Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) Chairman Zia Ahmed told on Monday after a meeting of the telecom regulator.
Bangladesh government currently does not offer VoIP licences. BTRC has sent a draft guideline to the telecom ministry for issuing licences to VoIP service providers.
VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol is a set of facilities for managing the delivery of voice information using the internet.
Asked about the amount of fine per SIM card used for illegal VoIP service, the commission chairman said they would sit later to fix the amount.
Why mobile phone operators
Ahmed said every SIM card has to be sold after registration in line with the law.
"But this law is not followed many a time," he said.
"It will be possible to prevent illegal VoIP service up to a certain extent if SIM cards are sold after proper registration," he added.
BTRC officials said around one million SIM cards were closed in drives against VoIP in the past three years. Of them, BTRC closed around 600,000 while the operators closed the rest.
"Illegal VoIP service will decrease if the operators strengthen monitoring. Besides, they will become more alert if we fine them," Ahmed said.
Bangladesh has six mobile phone operators - Grameenphone, Banglalink, Airtel, Robi, Citycell and state-owned Teletalk.
According to the BTRC, the average daily legal international calls were of around 35 million minutes in April. The amount had been over 50 million minutes previously, BTRC officials said. Every international call gets $0.3 for Bangladesh, according to them.