Citycell is losing licence, users have 7 days to switch operator: Tarana

State Minister for Post and Telecommunications Tarana Halim says her division has ‘decided in principle’ to revoke the licence of Citycell.

She said on Tuesday the customers of the oldest mobile-phone operator in Bangladesh now have seven days to switch to another operator.

 

Tarana said the government will decide whether the company’s operations will be shut for good. “The file on this will be sent to the government on Wednesday to finalise the decision.”

 

Telecom regulators BTRC Chairman Shahjahan Mahmood recently said they will close Citycell ‘anytime’ for its failure to pay around Tk 4.78 billion in government dues and asked its customers to switch to other operators within Aug 16.

 

Unhappy with the BTRC call, the state minister sat with the officials on Tuesday. Mahmood, Posts and Telecommunications Division secretary and other officials attended the meeting.

After the meeting, Tarana told reporters that apart from making the decision to cancel Citycell’s licence, the meeting agreed to give its subscribers seven more days starting from Aug 17 to switch operators.

After the biometric re-registration of SIM cards, Citycell has 100,000 to 150,000 subscribers, according to the BTRC.

Citycell did not pay the dues even after several notifications, Tarana said. “The formal process to revoke Citycell’s licence will begin from today (Tuesday).

 

“The file on this will be sent to the government tomorrow (Wednesday). Citycell will shut down once the government makes a final decision.”

 

When asked if that mean the operator will be shut out of business after seven days, she repeated, “The government will take the final decision.”

 

Amidst the BTRC move, Citycell CEO Mehboob Chowdhury had told bdnews24.com recently that they planned to restart their enterprise with new investments by the end of this month.

 

He had also sought assistance from the government to .

 

Posts and Telecommunications Division Secretary Md Faizur Rahman Chowdhury on Tuesday told reporters, “All measures for the process to collect the dues including sending notices (to Citycell) from the division and BTRC have been taken.

 

“The spectrum and licence will be cancelled once the decision (to shut the operator down) is final.”

 

When asked how the government would collect the dues, State Minister Tarana said, “We’ll collect the dues for sure. This should be an example for all the operators that we can be strict to collect the dues.”

 

“We’ll initiate cases and all legal measures to recover the dues as soon as possible.”

 

Asked what would happen to 400 Citycell employees once the operator shuts down, she said, “It’s their internal matter. The ministry or BTRC can’t say anything on this issue.”

 

Like Citycell, state-owned Teletalk and BTCL are also yet to pay their dues to the BTRC.

 

Asked whether steps will be taken to recover the dues from these two, Tarana Halim said, “The government can consider their dues as asset or adjust them as loan.”

 

“A file has been sent to the finance ministry to check whether Teletalk’s dues can be considered as paid-up capital. The ministry will decide on this,” she added.

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