The telecoms regulator, Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC), has asked the telecoms ministry to give the go-ahead to private operators to launch internet telephony via VSAT (very small aperture terminal) instead of going for an internet exchange.

"If the ministry give its nod immediately, we hope the internet telephony could be launched by the end of this month or first week of June," BTRC Chairman Syed Marghub Murshed wrote in a letter to the secretary of the ministry.

The BTRC thinks it is already late to award licence for the Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP), a technical synonym for internet telephony, and the ministry should come up with a formula that the private operators find friendly.

State telecoms monopoly Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB) introduced VoIP in February to generate calls to 10 countries without licence, a move that private operators say is against BTRC's even-playing field concept.

Telecoms Secretary Faruq Ahmad Siddiqi told The Daily Star that the ministry was considering to work out a formula making sure that the government does not lose revenue once the VoIP is introduced.

"It is not wise to launch VoIP without having a solution to the contentious issue. We are working on it and will inform the BTRC at the right time," Faruq said.

"Bangladesh can earn more than $2 billion till 2006 if we could grab a fraction of the region's call through VoIP," said Akhteruzzaman Manju, president of Internet Service Providers Association, Bangladesh (Ispab) quoting a report of the sixth International Asia Pacific Voice-over Internet Protocol Seminar.

He said VoIP service minutes and revenue in the Asia-Pacific are expected to touch $48 billion and call duration 600 billion minutes by 2006.

He said the region constituted 29.4 percent of the world market in terms of revenue in 1999 and the share is expected to rise to nearly 37 percent by 2006.

Prime Minister Khaleda Zia at a meeting of the ICT Task Force last month tasked the telecoms regulator and ministry with awarding internet telephony licence at the shortest possible time.