National security and sovereignty faces threat from foreign cell phone companies dominating the market of service providers in the country, ruling Awami League lawmaker Manoranjan Shill Gopal said on Monday.
Taking part in budget discussion in parliament he demanded raising the allocation to Tele-Talk, to enable the state owned cell phone company capture a larger share in the national market with more than 70 million cell-phone users.
He said that mobile phone companies owned by foreigners are dominating the cell phone service market.
'It poses a threat to our national security and sovereignty,' Gopal said.
'It involves the question of security,' he said.
He said that Grameen Phone is owned by Norwegians, Airtel by Indians, Bangla Link by Egyptians and Robi by the Japanese and Malaysians.
He said that state owned Tele-Talk was in bad shape while the companies owned by foreigners were doing monopoly business in Bangladesh.
He called it unfortunate that Tele-Talk had a poor share in a market of more than 70 million cell phone users.
The monopoly of foreign operators must be broken to make Tele-Talk commercially viable, he said.
Tele-Talk needs to be made popular among the cell phone users in Bangladesh to ward off the threat to national security and sovereignty, he said.
To achieve the objective, he said, the government should increase the allocation to Tele-Talk in the national budget.
Source : New Age
