Earnings received by the government and telecom operators against incoming international calls have dropped by at least 59 percent as a result of a government decision in February this year that allowed international gateway operators to share revenue with the government and the telcos on floor rate under the revised rules.
A plea made by the Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh to scrap a directive of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission that fixed the floor rate of incoming international call termination at 0.6 US cents contained the earnings fall estimation, a BTRC official told New Age on Thursday.
Besides the plea to scrap the directive, the association also proposed that the telecom regulatory should hold a discussion among the stakeholders related to international call termination as the commission took the earlier decision without consulting the mobile phone operators.
The commission, without fixing the upper limit of incoming international call termination, slashed the floor rate by 65.71 percent to 0.6 US cents.
Earlier, the incoming international call rate was set between 1.75 US cents and 2.5 US cents.
The commission refrained from specifying the upper limit of the incoming international call termination rate even though it is mandatory under the Bangladesh Telecommunication Act 2001 for the commission to specify the limit.
An estimation of AMTOB showed that telecom operators earnings from incoming international calls would drop by 58.72 per cent, or Tk 17.5 crore, to Tk 12.3 crore from Tk 29.8 crore per month even if the call volume increased by 20 per cent due to reduction in the floor rate.
On the other hand, the government’s earnings would drop by 58.79 per cent, or Tk 31.1 crore, to Tk 21.8 crore from Tk 52.9 crore.
The government gets 40 percent of the revenue generated through incoming international call termination while IGW operators get 20 percent, interconnecting exchanges 17.5 percent and mobile operators 22.5 percent.
The AMTOB made the estimation based on the price elasticity of demand.
However, the letter mentioned that lowering the floor rate would not guarantee an increase in customer benefit due to the reduced tariff.
As the IGW operators were sharing revenue at the floor price instead of sharing at the actual termination rate, the government as well as the telecom operators are being deprived of receiving the actual revenue.
When placed at the commission meeting at a recent meeting, the commission turned down the proposal made by the mobile phone operators.
As the decision was taken at a meeting on January 12 this year in presence of prime minister’s information and communication technology affairs adviser Sajeeb Ahmed Wazed and telecom minister Mustafa Jabbar, there was no scope for the commission to change the decision by organising any discussion meeting.
Source: https://www.newagebd.net/article/113505/telco-earnings-from-intl-call-termination-dips-by-59pc