From today local residence of Dhaka will be able to enjoy IP telephony service legally. Today, on Tuesday Eighteen different internet-service providers (ISPs) came up with IP telephony service in Dhaka. This service is available to anyone through mobile or computer. But have to have internet connection on it. With this IP telephony service from internet-service providers anyone will be able to call anywhere from any corner of the country at lowest possible rate. This for the first time in Bangladesh a large number of companies will provide this service with very low service charge.

Monthly charge for the IP telephony service is only Tk 100 and Tk 0.65 per minute from mobile. Sumon Ahmed, managing director of Bdcom Online said,  “This rate is lower than those offered by mobile operators.”  Though internet service is 'comparatively costlier' in Bangladesh than in other countries.

Rate for national and international calls are same for this ip telephone service with some regulatory limitations. This ip phone cannot be used in abroad. Internet-service providers (ISPs) has requested BTRC to bring down the call rate to Tk 0.30. They have mentioned that, almost one crore Bangladeshis live abroad and to make sure that they can benefit from the service, the government should ease the regulations

Govt. expecting with this new IP telephony service available, will reduce the use of illegal VOIP service. Until August 2009 number of legal calls were 63 crore and in February 2010 it has increased to 93 crore. Bangladesh telephone regulatory commission has deactivated 2.5 lakh mobile SIM cards and shut down 15,000 IPs that were used for  illegal Voip business.

State minister for science and ICT Yafes Osman called for the ISPs to work for the benefit of people.

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