Telecom ministry takes over tariff checks

The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has backtracked from approving any service or tariff of the telecom operators without prior consent from the telecom ministry, New Age reported.

BTRC  has been forwarding the operators’ service and tariff approval applications to the telecom ministry for the past week following verbal instruction from the commission chairman, according to a BTRC official. Under Section 48 of the Bangladesh Telecommunication (Amendment) Act 2010, the telecom ministry is the authority for such approvals whereas the BTRC can only make recommendations or observations while forwarding the applications to the ministry.

BTRC officials said the commission had been approving the services and tariffs of different operators on its own, violating the law since 2011. They said in many cases the operators launched the commercial services on approval from the BTRC, although the ministry approvals were still pending.