News Flash
DHAKA, July 7, 2025 (BSS) - Special Assistant to the Chief Adviser Faiz Ahmed Taiyeb today said different changes brought by the interim government in telecommunication sector have hurt the interest of all wrong-doers and corrupt people of the past period.
"The kind of changes brought by the government have hurt the interest of those who were involved in irregularities and corruption for long. ..That’s why some of our activities are being misinterpreted,” he said.
He was addressing a press conference at the Foreign Service Academy in the capital this afternoon.
Referring to a report published recently in a daily that “an attempt was made to stop the ACC investigation through a Demi-Official (DO) letter”, he said the matter is not based on fact. The DO letter was originally intended to seek the ACC's sincere cooperation, but the (newspaper) report misinterpreted it, he added.
Faiz Ahmed said, "We have fallen under the wrath of the “self-interested mafia” over telecommunication licenses. The BTRC and the Department of Postal and Telecommunications are currently working on a new generation of telecom license policies, which are the main guidelines of every international telecommunication organization including the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and GSM”.
“There is an attempt to cancel such licenses that are obsolete in the present world and to upgrade Bangladesh's telecommunication licenses to international standards. Since then, propaganda is going on against us," he added.
He said Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) under the previous government launched the International Long Distance Telecommunication Services (ILDTS) policy in 2010.
This policy greatly limited the scope of activities of Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) and the previous government mainly gave licenses one after another to different companies with political and business interests, he added.
He said the government has been trying to logically remove those licenses that were siphoning off a lot of money from this sector.
Faiz Ahmed said, 'Since 2015, the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) and GSMA (Global Platform of Mobile Operators) have been pressuring the Bangladesh government and regulatory bodies to come up with simplifying the licensing system.
But, the Awami League government did not do that, he said adding, “Since we have a reform mindset, we are giving importance to the issue.”
He further said, "In 2013, seven IGW operators, led by Salman F. Rahman, formed a cartel called 'IOF' (IGW Operators Forum) to control international call termination. Surprisingly, at that time, the BTRC and the Department of Posts and Telecommunications continued the pilot activities of IOF to validate IOF, which remained as a pilot programme for almost 12 years."
He further said, "Mobile operators were banned from directly bringing in international calls, where IOFs were terminating calls at $0.03 per minute but declaring revenue of only $0.006. Even though the actual termination rate came down to $0.001 by 2024, IOFs continued to declare only $0.0004 per minute. This gap has caused the government to lose more than Tk 8,000 crore in revenue in the last 12 years."
He commented that the entire amount of this huge revenue loss went into the pockets of Salman F. Rahman and his associates.
He called upon all to have faith in the government and continue working towards reforms in these complex and time-consuming issues without paying attention to misinterpretations and rumors.
