The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has suspended spectrum monitoring from five stations out of total 12 since December 29 against the backdrop of political turmoil in the country. “Monitoring from five spectrums has been shut down since December 29. This will continue until further decision is taken,” an official of the BTRC’s monitoring department told The Independent.

The BTRC has a total of 12 stations to monitor spectrum. Among these, five are station fields, one is a portable station, and five are mobile monitoring stations. According to the BTRC, the mobile monitoring station conducts surveillance on the use of spectrums and solves the problems of clients.
According to the 178th commission meeting of the BTRC, the mobile monitoring station is positioned in Dhaka, but will monitor spectrums all over the country.

The BTRC has five mobile monitoring stations. The total monitoring capacity of these stations is, at the highest, 3GHz, and at the lowest, 20MHz. “Monitoring of the spectrums has been hampered because of the political turmoil in the country. Monitoring has remained closed considering the safety of the monitoring equipment, which is very valuable,” according to the minutes of the commission’s meeting, signed by BTRC chairman Sunil Kanti Bose.

A senior official of the BTRC told The Independent that it is not possible to detect the unauthorised use of spectrum, though the regulator was earlier able to detect any unauthorised use of spectrum.

It is also not possible to ensure noise-free services for satellite television subscribers. At the same time, it is not possible to detect if FM radio subscribers are using unauthorised spectrum as the spectrums monitoring has been suspended, the official added.

At the BRTC meeting, the commission noted that it could spot when FM radio operators unlawfully used frequencies above 200 kilohertz in the spectrums. But currently, it is not possible to identify whether such activities are going on, as the monitoring of spectrums has been closed.

At present, different kinds of spectrum are used in the country. Among these, the operators applying CDMA technology use 850 MHz band, GSMA operators use 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2100 MHz, and the WiMax service providers use 2300MHz and 2600 MHz. The operators face problems when using these airwaves.

The meeting said the commission regularly monitors mobile phones, public switched telephone networks (PSTN), microwave, walkie-talkies, FM broadcasting, TV broadcasting, and other spectrums.