Summary

  • Section 47(2) of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Act, 2001 obliges operators to interconnect only where, in an area specified by the Commission, 25% of consumers take service from more than one operator. Outside that condition, interconnection is something an operator is permitted to establish, not required to.
  • A licence condition can do what the threshold does not: section 37(3)(g) allows a prohibition on preference or discrimination in giving connection to be written into a licence. Nothing in the copies read shows such a condition in force, an area designated, or exchange operation licensed as its own category.

A licence first, a duty second

The Bangladesh Internet Service Provider Internet Exchange Trust (directory entry) is the body behind the country's domestic exchange. What the statute says about the thing it operates is thinner than the name suggests, and the thinness is the story.

Start with the licensing chain, because it is the part of the Act that binds without a trigger. Section 35(1) prohibits establishing or operating a telecommunication system, or providing telecommunication service in Bangladesh or to any place outside it, without a licence. Section 36(1) puts the issuing power in one place, and the wording carried in the copies read on 13 November 2026 is direct: "The Commission shall have exclusive authority to issue licence for activities specified in clauses (a) to (c) of section 35 (1)," (government gazette text). Section 31(2)(a)(i) lists the same power among the Commission's general functions, and section 31(2)(h) adds authority to issue interconnection guidelines, determine the conditions that apply, and resolve disputes among operators (regulator-hosted copy).

Then the duty. Section 47(1) permits an operator to establish interconnection — a permission, not a command. Section 47(2) is where the command lives, and it arrives with a condition attached: the obligations apply where, in an area specified by the Commission, 25% of consumers take service from more than one operator. The fragment carried in the retrieved copy reads "such operators shall have the following obligation in respect of interconnection and providing access to the interconnection" (regulator-hosted copy).

Read the trigger closely, because it decides who is bound. It counts consumers, not traffic and not capacity: a quarter of the people buying service in a named area must already be buying it from more than one operator. The switch is therefore a finding about the retail market, made by the Commission, in a place the Commission has specified. Until that happens, the mandatory clauses describe a situation nobody has declared to exist.

What the duty does when it bites

When it does, the content is specific. Affected operators must execute interconnection agreements within three months after the new operator begins service, and must provide access to interconnection. They must act non-discriminatorily and transparently, give copies of the agreements to the Commission and to interested parties, charge on transparent cost-based terms that allow a reasonable return, and keep separate interconnection accounts. Sections 47(3) to (5) give the Commission oversight, dispute resolution, powers to intervene and to direct amendment, and the ability to act against a monopoly created through interconnection (government gazette text).

That is a fuller set of obligations than most interconnection regimes print in a statute. It is also entirely downstream of an administrative act. Three months is a clock that starts when a new operator begins service — inside an area that must first have been specified, against a threshold the text does not tell you how to measure. It states no population, no period and no evidence standard. A quarter of consumers is a clean sentence and an unclean test.

The route that needs no threshold

The licensing chain offers the alternative, and it is easy to miss because it sits in the licence-conditions section rather than the interconnection section. Section 37(3) lists what a licence may carry. Sub-clause (g) permits a condition prohibiting preference or discrimination in providing service, giving connection, or granting permission. Sub-clause (b) permits a compulsory obligation to serve rural and sparsely populated areas, capped at 10% of the licensee's capacity.

Giving connection is the phrase that matters. A non-discrimination condition written into a licence binds the licensee directly, with no consumer threshold and no area designation in front of it. The Commission does not need to find that a quarter of consumers in a district already buy from two providers; it needs only to have written the condition. Whether it has, for any licence relevant to domestic interconnection, is not established by anything read here.

What the record does not show

Three copies of the Act were read for this piece: the government-hosted gazette PDF, the regulator-hosted PDF, and the current Bangla consolidation on the Laws of Bangladesh site (Bangla consolidation). They do not agree in form. The gazette PDF's front matter carries S.R.O. 49-Law/2002 and an 11 March 2002 date, while its page headers display 9 April 2003 and 9 April 2001, and the Act text itself states 16 April 2001 — reported as printed, not reconciled. The Bangla consolidation is a different document again: it incorporates later amendments, including amendments displayed as effective in 2026, and its licensing and consumer-threshold wording differs from the 2001 English text. It is not the 2001 English text and is not quoted as such.

What none of the three supplies is the operational layer. No interconnection guideline issued under section 31(2)(h) was read. No designation of an area for the purposes of section 47(2) was read. No internet-exchange licensing guideline, licence schedule or licence instrument was read, so whether operating an exchange is a separate licensed category — and what conditions such a licence carries — is not established. Those are gaps in what was read, not findings about what the Commission has published.

One further caution about the definition the chain hangs from. The reading returned for these copies defines an operator as a person licensed to establish or operate a telecommunication system or provide telecommunication service, which would place licensed operators inside section 47. That definition was not inspected as text. It is a reading, not a quotation, and no conclusion here rests on it.

The exchange in the gap

BTW last read this object on 4 November 2026, and that piece was about the registry rather than the statute: one SMALL membership row at APNIC, zero ASNs, zero prefixes, zero contacts, and two site addresses that returned no text page that week. None of it answers the question asked here, and none of it is repeated as evidence about the Act.

What the statutory reading does establish is a shape. A domestic exchange is useful to the extent that operators appear at it, and in Bangladesh the obligation to appear is conditional on a market finding in a specified area. The unconditional lever is the licence. That makes the Commission's paperwork, not the exchange's switch, the thing to watch: an area designation, an interconnection guideline, or a condition in a licence would each move every operator in the country at once, and none of the three appears in the copies read on 13 November 2026.

The consequence is blunt. If you are deciding whether a domestic exchange in Bangladesh is infrastructure you can rely on, the statute does not yet tell you that anyone is obliged to meet you there. It tells you who could oblige them, and through which two instruments — which is a different, and far more answerable, question.