Dhaka, Bangladesh (BBN)- The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) is going to issue VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) licences by the end of this month, officials said.
Some 844 companies, out of the nominated 1,004 entities, will get licences for legal VoIP business, according to the telecom regulator.
BTRC Director General (Legal and Licensing Division) AKM Shahiduzzaman said his department has already completed all necessary works for issuance of VoIP licence. "We are expecting to start the process of handing over licences to the finally selected companies by this month.”
Earlier, the BTRC issued letters to the 1,004 companies selected by the telecom ministry for the service for receiving VoIP licences after they submitted licence acquisition fee of BDT 0.5 million each by February 14.
In the first phase 808 companies deposited their fees and then BTRC expanded the timeframe to February 28 for rest of the companies. In this time, more than 50 companies submitted the licence acquisition fee.
Currently, the VoIP market size is nearly 70 million calls per day of which about 30 million are terminated in an illegal way, according to the data of the industry insiders.
BBN/SSR/AD-16Mar13-10:45 am (BST)
