Man with 30L worth VoIP equipment held for running illegal telecom setup in Dhaka

A joint team of Rapid Action Battalion 2 (RAB) and Bangladesh telecom regulator arrested a man for allegedly running an illegal telecom set up in the capital's Lalmatia area.

The arrestee has been identified as Shafiqul Islam, 40, a resident of Brahmanbaria.

Shafiqul was nabbed from a house on Zakir Hossain Road in Lalmatia on Tuesday evening, following a tip-off that he had been selling international voice calls bypassing the legal gateway for the past 18 months.

Voiceover Internet Protocol (VoIP) components worth Tk30 lakh, including three sim boxes of 512 ports, two sim boxes of 256 ports, seven laptops, five modems, one switch, and 900 Teletalk sim cards, were seized from his house.

Shafiqul told interrogators that his four-member gang had been in the illegal telecom business for nearly one-and-a-half years. 

The gang would sell maximum talk time worth Tk2.30 lakh per day, causing losses to the tune of Tk7 crore to the state exchequer, said Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission officials.