BTRC Want Daily Mobile Recharge limits up to 500 Taka

Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) is going to bar over Tk 500 recharge a day from a single SIM aiming to curb illegal call termination.
The Posts and Telecommunications Division has taken the decision mid of the current month.
The division also asked the BTRC to take necessary steps in this regard.
The division took up the idea from Prime Minister’s Information and Communications Technology Adviser Sajeeb Wazed Joy who advised the division to take the move during his maiden visit at the ministry on October 21, 2015.
During the visit, Sajeeb Wazed Joy advised the concerned authorities to control recharge on suspected SIM for avoiding illegal call termination.
The revision of the Bangladesh Telecommunications Act 2010 (Amended), however, kept a provision of imposing Tk 300 crore fine, if any operator’s involvement is found in such illegal call termination.
Around 60 million minutes of international calls are made to and from Bangladesh a day. Of those, more than 30 percent calls are terminated through illegal VoIP operators.
Call termination through VoIP has become a lucrative business here as the technology offers international calls at charges much lower than those of the legal calls.
The government is losing around 30 million minutes of legal international incoming calls per day after the IGW Operators Forum increased the termination rate to 2 US cents from approved 1.5 cents without informing the government.
The average call volume was 110-120 million minutes per day in June-July period before the IGW increased the rate to two cents on August 24, 2015, according to the data of the BTRC.
The international incoming call reached its record high on June 23, 2015 with eyewitness 125 million minutes. On August 24, the international incoming call was 107 million minutes which came down to 60 million minutes now.
The BTRC has finalised a proposal to set the upper limit of the call termination to 1.8 cents to 2:0 cents as per directive of the ministry.