Corporate SIM sale now needs prior BTRC nod
Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has tightened its grip on the sale of corporate mobile connections to prevent misuse, including illegal activities, of the connections.
The telecom regulator recently sent a letter to all mobile phone operators asking to take permission prior to selling new corporate connections.
The directive came against the backdrop of two persons being detained and over 550 SIMs of Grameephone being seized from their possession by Rapid Action Battalion on October 7.
The law enforcers alleged the duo preactivated about 867 SIMs, including the ones seized, from June 9-11 using information of 42 companies.
They also said such SIMs were used to issue threats, extort money, run illegal VOIP business and other criminal activities.
A person can buy 15 SIMs. Each is registered against the person's fingerprint, personal information and photograph. It is stored in the national data server.
However there is no such limit for companies or institutions. They just need to provide valid documents and a nominated person's national identification card and fingerprint against which the SIMs are registered.
Law enforcers say this makes it troublesome to identify the real culprits for it provided a scope to play the blame game.
The latest move will make it harder to collect corporate SIMs, said the BTRC officials.
“This is the first time the BTRC will be controlling the sale of mobile SIMs and making the process stricter,” said an official of the regulator familiar with the matter.
The BTRC says there were 15.42 crore active SIMs in Bangladesh as of August. The regulator, however, could not state how many were in use under corporate agreements.
Meanwhile the BTRC is also verifying corporate numbers at random. Operators are submitting their corporate numbers and focal points of respective companies with their email IDs and other contacts.
“It might not be logical to check all the connections one by one,” said a senior official of the regulator.
Md Jahurul Haque, acting chairman of the BTRC, said if the regulator still finds anomalies on the part of the operators, they would definitely be punished while unauthenticated SIM cards blocked immediately.
The government registered and re-registered mobile phone numbers from January to May last year. Law enforcers say SIMs were still being registered bypassing the legal format.
Illegally pre-activated SIMs are being sold in the market for Tk 500 to Tk 5,000 each, the buyers inevitably being mostly those with ill-intentions, whereas a regular connection costs about Tk 100.
