In the regulation, the methodology for framing the interconnection charges has been left to the mutual agreements amongst the concerned operators. They are free to use Senders Keep All (Bill & Keep) or Revenue Share or Retail-Minus system or Cost Based charging option depending upon the agreement among themselves. There is also a provision in the regulation for dispute resolution in case the parties are unable to reach an agreement within 90 days of the initial request for interconnection.

2.2. Today all interconnection agreements are arranged on a bilateral basis, with no performance, service quality and network availability obligations imposed. Service providers are prone to predatory pricing and to refusing access to competitive operators by the incumbent operators. A significant share of calls originating on mobile networks fail to complete on the public switched telephone network (PSTN) because of insufficient interconnection. Calls between mobile networks have also been severely constrained and therefore subscribers commonly maintain connections from multiple service providers.

2.3. The bilateral Interconnection has been mandated between incumbent BTTB, PSTN operators also among mobile operators. Interconnection to ILD network and NWD network is achieved through BTTB’s fixed network. This scenario is depicted below for Dhaka:

2.4. In late 2003 the mobile industry took a landmark step when, after five years of operation, the first transit exchange for interconnection was put into service at Dhaka at their cost to facilitate calls from one network to another. In this era of fast liberalization when more and more PSTN licenses are being awarded & NWD & ILD may also be opened up for private competition, the interconnection situation may become more complex in a multi-service scenario. Such scenario can be depicted in following diagram:

3. PROBLEMS OF EXISTING INTERCONNECTION REGIME

The existing arrangement of conventional bilateral
interconnection in a multi-operator, multi-services
environment suffers from following:

1. Higher interconnection cost and port charges.
   
   
2. Delay in provision of Interconnection by incumbent operator due to capacity constraint.
   
   
3. Sub-optimal utilization of resources.
   
   
4. Inefficient handling of calls.
   
   
5. Higher expenditure in managing interoperator settlements.
   
   
6. Need for more no. of Interconnection links& ports in incumbent exchange.