The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has set a floor price of Tk 0.19 per SMS for bulk sale by mobile phone operators to SMS aggregators who sell these messages to third parties.
These third parties use these messages for promoting their products and disseminating information to its customers through the mobile phone operators and SMS aggregators.
As per the BTRC’s directive in this regard issued on Monday, the mobile phone operators, public switched telephone network operators and internet protocol telephony service providers will have to sell bulk SMS to the SMS aggregators at Tk 0.190.23 an SMS.
After buying in bulk, the SMS aggregators would be allowed to resell these messages to their clients for sending them to subscribers of mobile phone, IPTSP and PSTN operators at Tk 0.30.34 per SMS.
The same ceiling and floor price would be applicable for the mobile phone, IPTSP and PSTN operators in case of direct SMS sales to third party clients for sending them to the subscribers of the telecom operators.
The telecom regulator set the tariff rates for both cases of bulk SMS sales excluding value added taxes.
Prior to issuance of the BTRC directive, the telecom operators were selling bulk SMS at as low as Tk 0.01 per SMS to the SMS aggregators.
Officials of the third parties, which send SMS to their customers after purchasing them from the SMS aggregators, said that their cost would increase significantly due to imposition of the new tariff rate and subsequently, they would have to pass on the increased cost to their customers.
However, the floor rate would be profitable for the telecom operators, they said.
In its directive, the communication regulatory commission also barred the SMS aggregators from sending SMS directly to the customers through the telecom operators in favour of their clients.
Regarding the reason behind the initiative, the BTRC’s instruction said that the telecom operators had failed to provide the required information to law enforcement agencies when the agencies were investigating different criminal and fraudulent activities.
The telecom operators’ lack of control over bulk SMS sent by the SMS aggregators was the reason behind the operators’ failure to provide data to the law enforcement agencies, he said.
Following the emergence of the problem, the commission came up with the directive asking the MNP operator to set up a central SMS platform that will keep track of the SMS sent through the SMS aggregators.
To this end, the mobile number portability service provider, Infozillion Teletech BD, was asked to develop the system and other required infrastructure so that the entity will be ready within 30 days to launch the service commercially.
For providing the service, the Infozillion Teletech BD would get Tk 0.05 as charge against each SMS.
Source: https://www.newagebd.net/article/129906/btrc-sets-sms-floor-price-at-tk-019-for-bulk-usage