Dhaka Phone strives to resume operations

Dhaka Phone has recently applied to the government to revive its licence in a bid to resume operations.

The private land-phone operator lost its licence in May 2010, along with four others, after allegations of illegal international call termination.

Two of them have already revived their licences and are back in operation. Dhaka Phone sent an application to the telecom division on October 18, signed by KM Shahid Ullah, the company's managing director, with an offer to pay their dues in instalments.

Dhaka Phone owes Tk 2.2 crore to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission; the company wants to pay 20 percent of the amount as a down-payment and the rest in instalments, according to the application.

Officials of the telecom division said they have forwarded the application to the BTRC for a decision.

Earlier, the company applied to the government for exemption of the entire dues and sought support to resume operations, but got no reply.

In March 15, 2010, the regulator shut down operations of RanksTel, PeoplesTel, National Telecom, Dhaka Phone and WorldTel without any prior notice and cancelled their licences after two months. At the time, Dhaka Phone had 77,000 active connections. RanksTel was the market leader with more than 300,000 subscribers, followed by PeoplesTel with 160,000, National Telecom 138,000, and WorldTel 14,000.

RanksTel and WorldTel have resumed operations.

In June 2011, after several meetings with the companies, the government decided to withdraw the licence cancelation order. Dhaka Phone accepted the conditions and signed a bond with the BTRC.

The company also withdrew its 'improper shutdown' case, but the regulator did not yet withdraw its case against the company, the application said.

"We haven't yet received a response from the regulator and our losses are increasing," said the company's managing director in the application.

The company said they have a syndicated term loan from 11 banks and their dues are increasing by the day.

At the same time, some of the creditors have also filed cases against them in different courts.