Anika Farzana and Abu Saeed Khan
bdnews24.com correspondents
Dhaka, April 4 (bdnews24.com) -- Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has ruled out the leading private fixed-phone operator RanksTel's claim of "doing nothing wrong" with international telephony services using VoIP technology.
"We have neither granted any licence nor have we permitted any entity to operate overseas telephone services using VoIP or any other technology," BRTC's legal and licensing commissioner MA Salam told bdnews24.com Wednesday.
He was commenting on RanksTel CEO Zakaria Swapan's claim that BTRC had temporarily issued a VoIP licence in September 2006 and accordingly his company operated international services until the regulator withdrew that licence in January 2007.
"RanksTel's claim is untrue," the BTRC official said. He said RanksTel and other companies had applied for VoIP licence and also paid licence fees. But BTRC could not issue any licence due to the injunction from the High Court.
Zakaria Swapan, who is currently visiting Singapore, was interviewed by telephone. He also admitted to not having the VoIP licence but claimed to be misquoted by "a section of press".
"We ran a trial operation of VoIP service in anticipation of having the licence," he said. Swapan also admitted to "processing only 20 million minutes in four months."
"That is under no circumstances the volume of a commercial VOIP service for the size of network like RankTel's size," he defended.
Swapan said such trial of a proposed service is "standard practice" as the technology providers assess the technical competence and fine-tune the quality.
"We ran the trial of international call services using VoIP technology for four months and shut it down in January when there was no hope of getting the VoIP licence." Swapan further insisted, "It proves RanksTel's innocence."
But BTRC's legal and licensing commissioner brushed aside Swapan's argument.
"Assessing all kinds of trial and error of a specific telecoms service must begin after the issuance of particular licence and anybody deviating from that rule is grossly in violation of the law."
A RAB intelligence unit raided RanksTel office Monday night and seized documentary evidence of illegally operating overseas phone calls using VoIP technology by the operator.
The raid was conducted by a six-member regulatory committee to prevent illegal VoIP business.
Major Shamsuzzaman, deputy director of the RAB intelligence unit that conducted the raid, told bdnews24.com they had seized documents of VoIP calls from September 2006 to January 2007 at the office.
RanksTel had operated at least two million minutes of illegal VoIP calls in the last five months, according to the documents.
RAB officials said they had also found evidence that the company was preparing VoIP call agreements with several foreign companies.
The public call offices across the country including Munshiganj and Kanchpur have been found running illegal VoIP businesses using RanksTel connections, RAB alleged.
"Has BTRC been asleep?" Zakaria Swapan told bdnews24.com Tuesday. "The regulator is trying to make us scapegoat."
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