Telecoms regulators for cheaper calls

Dhaka, Dec 12 (bdprem.com)—Regional telecoms regulators Wednesday agreed to fast-track efforts to cut telephone call rates for people in South Asia. They also agreed to form a working committee to build a common billing infrastructure for roaming facilities in South Asian countries. The twin major decisions came from the ninth South Asian Telecommunications Regulators' Council (SATRC) meeting that started at Radisson Water Garden Hotel Monday. BTRC chairman Manzurul Alam was elected to chair the council for the year 2008. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, he said they had decided to review the regional tariff. "Tariff issue is not limited only to regulators; we also need to sit with the operators for this," he added. Alam said that regulators would sit with operators in their respective countries. "We discussed considering the whole region as a zone, so that calls can be made at lower rates. The regulators will talk to their governments to allow subscribers between the nine countries of this region to call at cheap rates within a year," he said. The BTRC chief said that roaming bills in this region are comparatively high and differs among countries. "The European Union has recently fixed a common roaming bill for the region and we also want to do something like that. A working group of representatives of the nine countries would be formed in this regard," he said. "The roaming bill would be fixed upon discussing with the operators, which would be finalised by the middle of next year." The meeting also discussed regional interconnectivity. South Asian nations have no common interconnectivity among themselves, but some countries do have it through bilateral understandings, representatives from different countries stressed. The regulators discussed rural connectivity at the meeting and concluded that it is an important issue as 80 percent people of the region live in rural areas. It was also decided that the countries would share information with each other on implementing rural connectivity projects. The meetings also discussed issues like VoIP, grey market, IP telephony and next generation network. SAARC member countries along with Iran, as an observer, joined the meeting.