"GrameenPhone (GP) has submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications to increase the ITX capacity of the state-owned fixed phone operator," said Mehboob Chowdhury, sales and marketing director of the GP.

The congestion in the ITX causes call drop at a very high rate, he mentioned.

Admitting this, a top official of the BTTB said the ITX is the country's gateway to make and receive international calls. "Increasing the ITX capacity has become a necessity," he added.

The BTTB has a plan to increase its ITX capacity by installing 4,000 circuits for domestic calls and an equal number for international calls. It had also floated international tender for the project but bureaucratic tangles stalled any progress to that end.

Four private operators are ready to invest $5 million in the BTTB's capacity-building ITX project, sources said.

Meanwhile, private operators will get two lakh more connections with the fixed phone network of the BTTB under a project. They would invest over $2 million in the BTTB's tandem exchange to increase its capacity and install a fibre optic network.

At present, the BTTB does not have enough inter-connection capacity to facilitate an operator to enter another operator's network.

Bangladesh earns over Tk 300 crore a year in foreign currency from incoming international phone calls and more than Tk 200 crore from outgoing calls.

GrameenPhone is the leading cell phone operator in Bangladesh having one million subscribers while three other operators -- CityCell, AKTEL and Sheba -- have around five lakh customers. The number of land phones is over 8 lakh.