Bangladesh Plans New Telecom Policy

The people of Bangladesh will have to wait for some more time to get a taste of the next generation services, as the government is in no mood to auction 3G/4G spectrum. Ministry of Post and Telecommunications of Bangladesh wants the telecom operators to learn from the business model of other countries, before rolling out the services.

Further, the government will soon bring in New Telecom Policy. It may limit the role of powerful Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC), having authority of both licensing and spectrum.

These are some of the indications that Sunil Kanti Bose, Secretary, Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, Bangladesh made in his speech on the second day of VOICE&DATA SAARC CEO Conclave, held in Dhaka from October 30-31, 2009.

Around 150 CXO's of telecom operators from the SAARC countries were present in the two day event. The event was inaugurated by Rajiuddin Ahmed Raju, Minister of Posts & Telecommunications, Bangladesh on October 30.

In his speech Bose accepted that the Bangladesh government was not thinking about the allocation of 3G/4G spectrum, while some of the neighbourhood countries have rolled out the services, while others are all set for the same.

"We should resolve to be in the second, if not the first, group of countries to adopt 4G technologies. I know that there are still debates about when 4G will be ready and what the winning standards will be. If we simply start assigning frequencies without specifying what exact services may be offered using them, the market will decide the winning technologies. It is of course possible that operators may make mistakes and back wrong horses. If we can set in place even a rudimentary secondary market in spectrum, we will allow those mistakes to be corrected and spectrum to be used for the best services that people want," said the Secretary.

Referring to the changes in the new telecom policy the secretary said, "The ministry is working hard to get some of these ideas (migration from 2G network to NGN) written into the National Telecommunications Policy so that the regulatory agency can develop the detailed mechanisms".

 

He further talked about strengthening the role of ministry in the telecom industry.

"We are giving serious consideration to mechanisms to strengthen the capacity of the ministry so that it can serve as strong policy player complementing the regulatory actions of the BTRC. It is not that we are contemplating taking back either the licensing powers or the spectrum-management functions from the BTRC. They can continue the implementation functions. We at the ministry will play our role, setting the broad policy frameworks, taking into account the larger priorities of the government such as Digital Bangladesh by 2021," he pointed out .

Earlier, in his speech he praised the effort of VOICE&DATA for organising the 8th SAARC CEO Conclave in Dhaka.

"The Conclave is taking place at a very significant time when the present government has emphasised the telecommunication and ICT sector for the development of the country to make a “Digital Bangladesh". Vision has been set up to achieve such a Bangladesh by 2021. As we know that the theme of the Conclave 2009 is INNOVATION FOR GROWTH. I think that ideas, debates and discussions on the current market conditions, innovation in services, infrastructure, regulation, policies and business models of the SAARC countries from participants and experts would help us to achieve growth and assist to synergies and leverage from SAARC as a region" Bose said.

Akhilesh Shukla from Dhaka

akhileshs@cybermedia.co.in