Illegal international call termination using SIMs (subscriber identity module) of state-run Teletalk continues in a large scale despite various measures taken against it by the government, including the latest biometric verification of SIM cards. This illegal practice is depriving the government of huge revenue, said industry experts. The Independent has identified that the lone state-owned mobile operator has a very large number of ‘off-net minutes per day’. The ratio of this number in relation to their market share is abnormal, compared to the other operators in the country. This may be an indicator of the large amount of international calls that are being illegally channeled through Teletalk SIMs to domestic users, said experts. The phone calls made on the same network— for example from Teletalk to Teletalk—are called ‘on-net’ calls, while ‘off-net’ calls or messages are those sent to a subscriber of a different operator. Meanwhile, a staggering 45 per cent of Teletalk SIMs still remain biometrically un-verified. Industry insiders said the huge number of unregistered Teletalk SIMs, which were supposed to be blocked by now, are still operational and allegedly being used to terminate international calls illegally, depriving the government of a large revenue.
The estimated daily volume of calls being terminated illegally in the country stands at 45 million minute. If the government loses $0.02 in revenue per minute, than the loss for the government stands at $27 million a month with the annual loss reaching $325 million.
Data obtained from the Interconnection State Exchange (ICX) shows that the average off-net domestic minutes per day for Teletalk was 27 million for the last 10 days of May, with the biometric verification deadline ending on May 31.
During that same period, the average off-net domestic minutes per day for the four largest operators—GP, Banglalink, Robi and Airtel — were 40, 41, 31 and 29 million minutes respectively. It is to be noted that these four hold 43 per cent, 24 per cent, 21 per cent and 7 per cent of the market respectively, while Teletalk’s share is 4 per cent.
After the biometric registration deadline ended, the average off-net domestic minutes per day for Teletalk dropped by 3.70 per cent or just 1 million minutes. It was 26 million for the first 10 days of June.
During the same period, Airtel showed a drop of 13.7 per cent. From an average 29 million off-net domestic minutes per day during the last 10 days of May, the number dropped to 24 million for the first 10 days of June.
After the re-registration process ended on May 31, around 26.75 per cent of Airtel SIMs remained unregistered, against 45 per cent of Teletalk.
During the same period, the average off-net domestic minutes per day for GP, Banglalink and Robi remained more or less the same at 40 million, 40 million and 32 million, respectively.

According to data from Meucci SIM box detection tool, operator wise number of SIMs that were used on June 15 to terminate calls illegally were respectively 3, 2, 1 and none for Robi, GP, Banglalink and Airtel. However, on that same day, 1,731 Teletalk SIMs were identified by the detection tool to be used to terminate calls illegally.
The Independent had recently reported that based on the SIM box detection tool data of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), illegal international call terminations for Teletalk had not gone down even after the biometric registration process.
Talking to The Independent earlier this month, Teletalk Managing Director Gias Uddin Ahmed said, “Teletalk is not involved in any illegal activities like call termination. It is a conspiracy against the state-run company. A few private operators are always seeking to destroy Teletalk.”
“Teletalk has always taken action whenever it has detected illegal call terminations through VoIP. We block 5,000–6,000 SIMs every day. The problem is that around 45 per cent of the SIMs are still unregistered. It is not possible for us to identify the owners of the numbers that are still being used for illegal call terminations,” he had added.
Industry experts pointed out that biometric verification of SIMs has now made it easy to detect the identities of subscribers who are using their SIMS for illegal call terminations.
According to BTRC data, the number of active subscribers in the country is 131.95 million, of which over 116 million have already completed biometric registration.
The number of SIMs that were re-registered until May 31 are 49.6 million of GP, 27.8 million of Banglalink, 20.2 million of Robi, 7.4 million of Airtel, 2.3 million of Teletalk and 2.2 million of Citycell. The SIMs of 23.84 million active subscribers were blocked along with 76.159 million inactive SIMs.

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Teletalk rules the roost (07-06-2016)

When Teletalk above law (09-06-2016)

Teletalk misses second deadline (17-06-2016)