Dhaka, April 10 - Indian telecom major Bharti Airtel has an "unfair market advantage" over its competitors in Bangladesh, a report said here Sunday.

The draft Cellular Mobile Telecommunication Operators Licence Renewal Guidelines 2011, prepared by the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) on behalf of the posts and telecommunications ministry, allows unfair market advantage to Airtel, the latest operator to enter the market, "telecom industry insiders" were quoted as saying in New Age.

Right from Airtel's 70 percent stake in Warid Telecom for $100,000 to allowing Airtel to exchange spectrum band access free of charge, "the government and the commission have displayed a bias towards Airtel in their treatment of the telecom industry".

Four leading operators - Grameenphone, Orascom (Banglalink), Axiata (Robi) and Pacific Bangladesh Telecom Ltd (Citycell) - are up for licence renewal in November, after the expiry of the 15-year term of their licences.

Airtel, which acquired the licence in December 2005 for $50 million, is not up for renewal until 2020. It gets a window of nine years in which it will be providing services for much lower rates, the report says.

According to the draft, operators will need to pay application fee, licence renewal fee, annual licence fee, revenue sharing, social obligation fund as well as separate licence fees and charge for spectrum use.

The spectrum fees have been set at Tk 1.5 billion ($20 million) per MHz of GSM 1,800MHz band frequency and Tk 3 billion ($40 million) per MHz of GSM 900MHz band to be multiplied with the utilisation factor of each of the operators.

In total, Grameenphone would have to pay Tk 55 billion ($755 million), Banglalink Tk 29 billion ($410 million), Robi Tk 30 billion ($400 million) and Citycell Tk 6.2 billion ($85 million).

Top officials of the four leading operators say the proposed fee is too high and will force the operators to increase prices for services.

"Outside of Grameenphone, the three other operators still operate on losses and, therefore, we do not understand the justification of this staggering fee," a top official of Banglalink said.

An official said Airtel's promotional offer of dinner with Indian actors Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor was against BTRC regulations. On complaints from other mobile operators, BTRC just issued a letter to all operators to not flout rules, foregoing any punitive action against Airtel. (IANS)