BTRC waves red flag to Railway, GP
Abu Saeed Khan
Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has accused Bangladesh Railway and GrameenPhone (GP) for doing "unauthorised" optical fibre leasing business. BTRC is contemplating further action against them as neither Railway nor GP gave satisfactory answer to the commission's query.GP had acquired the Railway's 1,616 km long optical fibre network in September 1997 for the transmission network of its mobile service. But it could not consume the total capacity and decided reselling the surplus bandwidth for non-voice applications with the approval of the Ministry of Post and Telecommu-nication (MoPT), the then regulator. When the telecoms law became effective on January 30, 2002, it became mandatory for all existing telecoms operators, including the state-owned Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB), to apply for fresh license by paying appropriate fees to BTRC within January 31, 2003. Accordingly BTTB had applied and obtained its license but neither Railway nor GP did so. Rather GP has intensified reselling the Railway's optical fibre bandwidth. On November 24, 2004 the GP officially launched its optical fibre business where the telecoms minister was the chief guest. "We were surprised at the minister's presence in that event". On December 13, 2004 the BTRC officially accused Railway for not obtaining the license to continue leasing out its optical fibre network to GrameenPhone. In the same letter BTRC also charged GP for not obtaining license to resell the bandwidth of the optical fibre network it has leased from Railway. Neither of their answers could satisfy BTRC, sources said. When contacted, a GP official said, "GrameenPhone is sub-leasing the fibre optic network capacity, originally leased from Bangladesh Railway, with due permission from the relevant authorities. It is being done to share this national resource for the overall improvement of the ICT sector, which has been declared as a thrust sector by the government." GP has, however, refused to comment on why it has not obtained any license or permit under Sections 35, 40 and 90(1) of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Act, 2001, as pointed by BTRC's letter. Sources said BTRC may order GP to keep the bandwidth sales suspended until it obtains the license. "We will give a decision within a couple of weeks," said Syed Margub Murshed, BTRC chairman, without revealing any details.
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