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Call for enacting Telecom Regulatory Commission Act


 

Experts at a policy brief yesterday strongly recommended immediate enactment of Telecom Regulatory Commission (TRC) Act for rapid growth of the country's telecommunication sector.

"The Ministry of Post and Telecommunications has gone out of the way to award license to a private company to install 300,000 fixed telephone in the city after a gazette notification for enactment of the TRC," said Abu Sayeed Khan, an independent telecom analyst.

The experts were speaking at a policy brief jointly organised by the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), The Daily Star and Prothom Alo on "Information Communication Technology" at the auditorium of Planning and Development Academy at Nilkhet in the city.

Prof Zamilur Reza Chowdhury, Vice-Chancellor of BRAC University, was in the Chair.

The Ministry had no authority to award the license to WorldTel, the private company, after the gazette notification on July 8, said Sayeed, who is also a member of the CPD task force on "Information and Communication Technology (ICT)".

"Under what authority has the ministry awarded the license?" Sayeed asked. He said the Ministry is reportedly trying to manage the matter through a Statutory Regulatory Order (SRO).

The TRC is the key component of the telecom sector reforms programme. It has been conceived as the major instrument to ensure a level playing field for all telecom operators in the country. The TRC's job is to issue license to operators, allocate inter-connection and frequencies and fix the tariff of different telecom services.

The Task Force report said Bangladesh is the only South Asian country not to have a telecom regulator till July 8, 2001, On July 8, 2001 the TRC Act went into operation through a gazette notification. The BTTB had been regulating the sector until the telecommunications Ministry took over in 1995.

It said the Telegraph Act of 1885 in tandem with the Wireless Act of 1933 had been the only governing tools until the National Telecommunications Policy (NTP) was enacted in 1998. It made little difference as far as transparency in decision-making is concerned, as the Ministry relies on the BTTB for performing the regulatory tasks.

The state-owned telecom company remains a shadow regulator, which continues hindering the growth of the competitive private sector.

Overlapping of regulatory and operational role of the BTTB (Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board) greatly upsets the move to ensure a level playing field in the telecom sector.

Sustainable growth of the telecom, ICT and broadcasting in Bangladesh largely depends on effective and independent management of these sectors from a unified platform, the report also said.

Former Secretary of the Telecommunications Ministry SD Khan put emphasis on the tele-density (per capita use of telephone). He said to increase the tele-density to five per cent the sector needs to invest US$ 7 billion and it needs strategic partners for further development.

He said the number of mobile connections are going to cross that of fixed telephones by next year. But due to lack of adequate interconnection facilities, a large section of the mobile phone subscribers have been confined only to mobile-to-mobile connectivity.

Omar Farook Bhuiyan, an official at the IT department of the City Bank Limited, said the government should amend the foreign currency regulation to rationalise the e-commerce, as there are many ambiguities in it.

Atiq-e-Rabbani, General Secretary of BASIS, said the country needs to be more competitive to step into the global software business and to reduce the cost of data transmission.

He said private sector should reduce dependency on the government, which is weak in nature and immature.

Former DCCI President Aftabul Islam responded to the allegation that the country's trade bodies did not protest the monopolistic decisions of the Telecommunications ministry, which has hindered the development of the telecom and IT sector. He said the trade bodies did their level best to protect the interest of the telecom and IT sector.

Aftab said it was the trade bodies that forced the government to withdraw tax and VAT from computer peripherals and free VSAT from the BTTB monopoly.

Sheikh Abdul Aziz, Chief Executive Officer of Flora Limited, said the country needs a fibre optic backbone for high-speed data transfer. He said the proposal for 15 per cent price protection for locally developed software would not help much since there is still an automatic price protection for locally developed software as local software is cheaper.

He said local companies like stock exchanges did not ask local software developers to develop software for them. "Even the Central Depository Bangladesh Limited (CDBL) has signed agreement to buy software from abroad despite the fact that there are very competent software developers in the country.

Former Vice-Chancellor of Jahangirnagar University Prof Zillur Rahman Siddiqui, who attended the session as Special Guest, said there is no alternative to information communication technology. "I hope the next government takes adequate policy and steps for the development of information communication technology."

CPD Chairman Prof. Rehman Sobhan said experts in the ICT should act very positively and put their experiences together for development of the sector.

Earlier, Dr. Ananya Raihan, Fellow of CPD, presented the policy brief on the Information Communication Technology, while Habibullah Neyamul Karim, CEO of Technoheaven Ltd., Rasheda Chowdhury of Campaign for Popular Education, Sallar Sayeed and AKM Shamsuddoha of Dohatek, among others, participated in the discussion.