Bangladesh Regulator Threatens to Suspend Grameenphone's License

Bangladesh's telecoms regulator, the BTRC has warned the country's largest mobile operator, Grameenphone that it faces losing its mobile phone license if it continues to use illegal VoIP services. The company has been given 30 days to reply to the formal notice from the regulator.

The notice came just days after BTRC filed a case against Grameenphone's two preceding chief executives and eight incumbent and former officials, charging them with involvement in illegal VoIP business.

A raid by the regulator on offices of Grameenphone last December allegedly found direct connections from its switches to the internet service provider, AccessTel designed to route international calls over a VoIP carrier and bypass the national landline operator. International call termination to Bangladesh is a licensed service and is currently provided only by the state-owned landline telephone operator BTTB.

Malaysia based Digi Telecommunications has also been accused of using VoIP to terminate international traffic with Bangladesh, although Grameenphone denies any collusion. Norway's Telenor is a shareholder in both Digi and Grameenphone.

Responding to the ongoing saga, Telenor has instructed Grameenphone to launch an independent external audit of its network and find out why the VoIP services were used and shut them down.

Last October, Grameenphone made a payment of US$25 million to the government after it was accused of not clamping down sufficiently on users who used GSM SIM cards to bypass the landline operator for terminating international traffic.

Posted to the site on 31st January 2008