Bangladesh Telecomm-unication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) will take action against the operators if they don't refund the unused balance of the mobile SIMs that have been closed.
The regulator, however, is now going to take a pecuniary action against the operators for not following this directive. According to BTRC, no operator except Grameenphone has yet returned deposit of unused balance of closed mobile SIMs. BTRC officials said that the other mobile operators have Tk 40 to 50 crore unused which supposed to be deposited with BTRC.
Only Grameen-phone has deposited Tk7.34 crore to the commission. In last year, BTRC issued a letter to all operators saying that the SIM cards, which were closed from May 2008 to December 2014 on charges of illegal call termination, will have to return the unused balance to the BTRC. Only Gram-eenphone has responded to the call and gave back Tk 7.34 crore during the period. The operators had Tk 9.37 crore due regarding the issue.
GP said, they have already given 15 percent of the money to NBR as VAT and other 10 percent of the money deducted as other taxes and deposited the rest of the amount to with the commission. The operator said, the amount of balance remained in 25.42 lakh SIMs. Now they can re-sell these SIMs as the money has been paid.
On the other hand, BTRC have firstly given the letter to show cause within seven days to other operators why they haven't returned the unused balance. Initially, the operators replied that they were not informed about it. But BTRC served another letter of same kind again with a strong message but the operators did not respond.
A senior official said, after being refused again and again, the BTRC is going to take a tough decision against the defying operators. Meanwhile, the rule of 4G has also been included to provide the unclaimed balance back to the BTRC. However, the operators have made objection to the issue.