Citycell wants its licence reinstated | The Daily Star

Citycell, the country’s leading mobile operator which has been out of service since 2016, recently sent a letter to the telecommunications regulator asking for its license to be reinstated.

In the letter, the company said the cancellation of its license was due to an “unjustified perception” that Citycell was affiliated with a political party that was not favoured by the then Awami League government.

“We regret to inform you that for the past eight years, Pacific Bangladesh Telecom Limited (PBTL), the parent company of Citycell, has been subjected to arbitrary decisions and assessments by the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) with biased, ulterior and malicious motives,” the letter said.

“Furthermore, obvious discriminatory measures were taken by the BTRC in an excessive and abusive manner of its powers, solely based on the unjustified perception that the PBTL is close to a political party that is not in favor of the previous government,” he added.

Citycell’s operations were officially halted in 2016 after the telecom regulator cancelled spectrum from Bangladesh’s top mobile operator, which had been serving customers for more than two decades.

In October 2016, a technical team from the regulator rushed to Citycell’s headquarters in Mohakhali, Dhaka, to shut down its network switch after the operator failed to pay its dues on time.

At that time, Citycell owed Tk 477.69 crore to the regulator, according to the BTRC.

A court ordered Citycell to pay two-thirds of the amount, or Tk 318.42 crore, within four weeks.

Citycell said it had paid Tk 244 crore, or two-thirds of the dues assessed by the mobile network operator, to avoid closure.

At the time, Tarana Halim, then state minister for telecommunications, had told reporters at a press conference at the BTRC office: “We have taken this decision in accordance with the High Court verdict. The suspension of spectrum is permanent and there is no possibility of reversing it.”

However, the telecom regulator, pursuant to an order of the appellate division, returned Citycell’s spectrum and allowed the operator to use it for radio communications.

But the company was unable to resume operations.

Even before the shutdown, Citycell, which used code division multiple access (CDMA) technology over the popular Global System for Mobile communications (GSM), saw its customer base fall to 5.59 lakh in 2016 from a peak of 30 lakh in the early 2010s.

The main difference between GSM and CMDA is that GSM phones have SIM card slots, while CDMA has a fixed SIM card number for each phone. For many tech-savvy youth, this has translated into an inconvenience, deterring them from switching from one option to the other.

In September 2022, the government cancelled the spectrum allocation to Citycell due to non-payment of dues. Later, in March 2023, the BTRC cancelled the company’s license, claiming that PBTL owed the regulator Tk 218 crore.

In the license cancellation letter, BTRC stated that PBTL had failed to pay dues and comply with the order and judgment of the Appellate Division.

The Daily Star contacted the telecoms regulator for comment on Citycell’s application to reinstate its licence. But BTRC officials declined to comment on the application.

Nishat Ali Khan, head of regulatory and corporate affairs at PBTL, told The Daily Star that the charges mentioned in the cancellation letter mainly consisted of late fees. “We have paid all the major charges,” he said.

He added that late fees and current bills were due to the allocated spectrum, which was not being used.

“Had the company not been shut down due to the arbitrary decisions of BTRC and the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, PBTL’s revenue in the last eight years could have been around Tk 2,000 crore,” PBTL claimed in its letter to BTRC.

The company demanded the reinstatement of its cellular mobile operator license and radiocommunication equipment license, as well as a full 10 MHz spectrum.

They also demanded that 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G licences be valid until 2033 and called for the removal of the “illegal and arbitrary” penalty for non-payment of the licence fee.

Former BNP senior leader and former foreign minister Morshed Khan is the chairman of PBTL.