­The Bangladesh telecoms regulator, the BTRC is set to impose a fine equivalent to US$50 per SIM card that is used for illegal VoIP services.

The regulator said that it had observed an increase in VoIP traffic for international calls from people using unregistered SIM cards.

According to the regulator, 41 per cent illegal VoIP traffic was routed over the Banglalink network followed by state owned Teletalk (38%), Airtel (18%), BTCL and Robi Axita both with 1% each.

The regulator will be imposign the fine on the mobile networks, who should be verifying the identity of each SIM card purchaser prior to activation.

It is estimated that the country receives almost 55-60 million minutes international call a day, of with 50 million minutes comes via licensed connections and the rest via illegal SIM Boxes and VoIP traffic.

The regulator is just waiting final approval from the government before it starts imposing the fines.