A total of 42 firms have submitted their bids for setting up three international gateway exchanges in the private sector to route overseas calls to and from Bangladesh, said officials of the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission.

The deadline for submission of the bids expired on Tuesday.

Officials said that 65 firms bought application forms from the BTRC which invited the bids in October for setting up the gateway exchanges to break the monopoly of the Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board in the international call business.

The BTRC had invited bids from Bangladeshi enterprises for licences to set up, maintain and operate such systems under the International Long Distance Telecommunication Services Policy 2007, which stipulated that only a Bangladeshi citizen living in the country would be eligible to get the licence. The policy also bars the existing mobile and private land-phone companies and internet service providers from acquiring the international gateway licence.

‘We are happy at the response as the policy restricts the bidding only to local companies who do not possess any telecom service licence,’ said an official of the BTRC on Tuesday.

The official said an evaluation committee headed by Reza-e-Rabbi, vice-chairman of the BTRC, will scrutinise the proposals of the bidders to short-list the eligible firms and will then invite them to participate in the auction for the licence.

According to the regulatory and licensing guidelines of international gateway licence, the auction will be based on open bids and the bidders will bid for the percentage of the revenue to be shared with the BTRC.

The bidding will start at sharing 25 per cent of the revenue with the BTRC, and each successive bid will have to be incrementally higher by 0.25 per cent.

The BTRC has also fixed Tk 150 million as acquisition fee for each international gateway licence.

The duration of the licence will be initially a term of 15 years with an option for renewal after every five-year interval, subject to the BTRC’s approval.

All the three international gateways will be located in Dhaka and must be open to lawful interception by the intelligence agencies.

The guidelines say that the licensee will set up and begin the international gateway service within four months of the issuance of the licence.

The licensee will have the primary ‘backbone’ connection with international networks through the SEA-ME-WE submarine cable and also other submarine cables whenever available.

The licensee will have the back-up connectivity through the satellite earth station until an alternative submarine cable is available.