Telenor which owns 62 percent of GrameenPhone, Bangladesh's major cellular mobile operator, questioned the legality of the order in its third quarter report, published on Thursday from Telenor's headquarters at Fornebu, Norway.

The Bangladesh Telecommuni-cation Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has asked all GSM mobile operators, except Teletalk, to pay Tk 1,100 in annual royalty and licence fees on each handset the mobile phone subscribers use. The GSM operators are however reluctant to pay these since they don't control the purchase and use of handsets of their customers.

Eventually Banglalink, an Orascom company, sued the BTRC, accusing it of unlawfully favouring Teletalk by exempting it from such payment.

The case remains pending with court but Telenor has launched an attack on the BTRC on the same issue. "The legitimacy and amount of the request for payment has not yet been clarified," the Norwegian operator says in its report.