The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) penalised the four major mobile operators in the nation a total of BDT76.5 million ($823,566) for hosting illegal VoIP services on SIM cards, The Daily Star reported.

BTRC fined state-run Teletalk BDT50 million, Robi Axiata BDT20 million, Grameenphone BDT5 million and Banglalink BDT1.5 million, with payment required by the end of June, the local newspaper wrote.

Illegal VoIP services allow users to make less expensive calls by bypassing interconnection exchanges and legal international gateways, eliminating termination fees which are shared with the government.

BTRC cracked down on unauthorised call termination in 2018 and 2019, finding 52,344 SIM cards with illegal VoIP service from the four operators and originally fining them BDT266 million, The Daily Star stated.

The fines were reduced at a hearing in April after the operators assured the agency they would take measures to ensure their SIM cards don’t support illegal calls.

Teletalk MD Shahab Uddin told The Daily Star it would again appeal to the BTRC to revise the penalty.