Foreign mobile operators involved in racket

A few foreign mobile phone operators, which take out profits of hundreds of millions of dollars from Bangladesh each year, have been largely supporting the phenomenally growing illegal VoIP business in the country.

Quoting a confidential study of a top international phone company, an industry insider said the mobile operators' billing patterns indicate that there is a market of 2.5 billion paid minutes in only mobile termination per year.

With 90 percent VoIP (voice over internet protocol) traffic terminating on mobile networks, the mobile companies make at least 66 paisa per minute from each call. The remaining calls are terminated through the landlines of Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board with the help of some dishonest employees.

It is estimated that the illegal VoIP business, which allegedly had blessings of Hawa Bhaban and other influential quarters, annually generates more than Tk 1,200 crore and the amount remains outside the tax net and official monetary transaction channels. Bangladesh was world's one of the top VoIP growth zones until the recent crackdown on the illegal business started.

Sensing that some influential quarters involved in this business do not want to legalise VoIP, mobile phone operators also became involved in it, industry insiders said.

One aggressive operator that entered the Bangladesh market a couple of years ago has consciously tapped this call termination business by selling special package for illegal VoIP operators, the insiders said.

However, one of the oldest mobile phone companies of the country had already got involved in the racket by the time this new company joined the show, they added.

The drive carried out by the Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) against the VoIP operation shattered the whole illegal network and recovered huge equipment and special SIM cards of these mobile phone operators.

As of Wednesday the Rab busted 19 such establishments.

But the law enforcers are not yet ready to accuse the mobile phone companies of being a party to this illegal business.

"We have recovered equipment and SIM cards of all companies, but mostly of two of them," said a Rab official involved in the drive.

"We cannot say for sure if the mobile companies have deliberately sold these SIM cards and equipment to the VoIP operators because most of these are sold openly as commercial packages. However, there is some equipment which is not supposed to be sold to anyone," he added.

An executive of a top mobile phone company said, "We have packages for public call services. Illegal VoIP operators take advantage of this package. But our company has never been involved in this operation."

He claimed that two "other" operators are widely known to have been involved in this racket.

A source in one of these two phone companies told The Daily Star that the top executive of his company instructed last month to completely stop the sale of SIM cards and equipment used for VoIP operation.

"Initially our company made a sale target to capture the VoIP market served at that time mainly by one mobile company. Our company prepared special packages and released them through big third party IT companies. There is no doubt that this was a conscious decision," he added.

Another official of a phone company said, "Mobile networks have been used extensively to terminate illegal VoIP calls. This is evident from the fact that every other received overseas call shows a mobile operator's calling line ID.

"Many VoIP operators route their traffic via dedicated E1 circuits--each equipped with 30 lines--provided by the mobile operators. This indicates their clear collusion with the VoIP operators," he added.

Many large-scale international VoIP shops route their traffic to mobile operators directly via the internet. "In these cases, the mobile operators act as international gateways, which is totally illegal as per the Telecom Act," he said. ''Mobile operators have siphoned off billions of taka by providing this type of clandestine service."

Criticising the role of Bangladesh Telecom Regulatory Commission (BTRC), he said, "BTRC's move to include mobile operators for awarding VoIP licence is an attempt to hand over yet another very important service to them, thereby paving the way for legal transfer of billions of dollars from the country with hardly any investment."

An internet platform of global VoIP operator http:// www.calltermination.info/ has 166 VoIP operators registered with it, mostly with local contact addresses and phone numbers. This platform helps the operators buy and sell call minutes, equipment and software to run the business.