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The Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board is unlikely to begin commercial operations of its mobile phone service by February as the board has yet to complete installation of all Base Transceiver Stations across the country.
   The officials of the mobile phone project said they are not ready to launch commercial operations due to inadequacy of base stations that would not be able to support 2.5 lakh mobiles.
   After missing several deadlines, the board met their December deadline with the technical launching of the mobile service on December 28 when the prime minister, Khaleda Zia, spoke to the president, Iajuddin Ahmed, through a BTTB mobile phone.
   The minister for post and telecommunications, Aminul Haque, on December 29 said the mobile phone would finally be available in the market by February although it was supposed to hit the market by December.
   According to the project officials, the board has so far installed only 100 base stations out of a required 577 including 133 base stations in Dhaka alone.
   The base station is a tower with an antenna and a tranciever which receives and sends signals to handsets.
   The board has installed about 30 base stations on its property in Dhaka. It has signed agreements with 35 house owners out of a required 1,00 houses where the base stations will be installed.
   A project official said it would take at least two more months to install all the stations to bring the whole country under the coverage of its mobile phone network.
   The main switching centres, interface between the base station and the switching subsystem, have already been installed in Dhaka, Sylhet, Chittagong and Bogra.
   The mobile phone will be distributed under ‘Teletalk’ brand of Teletalk Bangladesh — a hundred per cent government owned company — with Tk 2,000 crore of authorised capital.
   However, project officials said Teletalk is yet to chalk out concrete plans of distributing the mobile phones.
   Teletalk recently signed an interconnection deal with the other mobile operators.
   For availing a Teletalk mobile, consumers have to pay Tk 4,500 for a post-paid SIM card and Tk 3,000 for pre-paid SIM card. The monthly line rent for the post-paid connection will be Tk 350.
   Earlier, the board fixed call charges at Tk 5 per minute for its post-paid service between zones and Tk 4 per minute for the pre-paid service during the peak hours.
   The board will charge Tk 3 per minute for a call within a zone for its post-paid service during the peak hour.
   The board has fixed off-peak hours between 10:00pm and 8:00am when call charges will be Tk 2 for post-paid and Tk 2.60 for pre-paid services.
   Teletalk will offer free incoming and outgoing call facilities from landline connections.
   The ministry faced severe criticism when a meeting of parliamentary standing committee last month asked the ministry to revise the call rates.
   But the board officials said chances of any reduction in call charges at the initial stage are very slim.

Leaders of different organisations on Monday protested against the killing of the Awami League lawmaker, Shah AMS Kibria, also a former finance minister, and five others in a grenade attack on an Awami League rally in Habiganj on Thursday.
   The leaders of the Sammilita Nari Samaj, Sammilita Peshajibi Parishad, Bangabandhu Engineers’ Parishad, Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Federation of NGOs in Bangladesh demanded immediate arrest of the culprits and exemplary punishment for them.
   They also conveyed their sympathies to the members of the bereaved families.
   The leaders of the Nari Samaj in a release said there had been 18 such incidents which remained unsolved and urged the government to find out all responsible for the incidents.
   AKM Ishaque, president of the Engineers’ Parishad, at a gathering at the Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh said culprits continued to carry out bomb and grenade attacks across the country with the government’s support.
   Ishaque said poor law and order situation marks the failure of the BNP-Jamaat alliance government. ‘The government does not have right to play games with our lives.’
   The organisation leaders said people are worried about bomb or grenade attacks everywhere. On the other hand, there is ‘crossfire’ by the Rapid Action Battalion.
   The chamber leaders in a press release said such incidents not only vitiates domestic investment climate but also seriously tarnishes the image of the country abroad particularly on the eve of the summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation.
   They urged the law enforcing agencies to quickly identify the perpetrators of the grenade attack and appealed to the political parties to help create congenial business climate and resolve all national issues.
   The federation leaders in a release said recurrence of such grenade attacks on the political parties will create unrest and hamper democracy in the country.

Bikalpadhara Bangladesh on Monday observed a token hunger strike protesting against the killing of Shah AMS Kibria.
   The president of the party, AQM Badruddoza Chowdhury, said the ruling BNP ministers, who admitted to the government’s failure in maintaining law and order, should resign.
   “If they don’t, the nation will never forgive their moral bankruptcy”, he told a gathering after inaugurating the hunger strike at the central office of the party in the capital.
   He referred to the statement made on Friday by the BNP secretary general and the LGRD minister, Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, at a press conference accepting the weakness of the administration and a similar view reportedly expressed by the finance minister, M Saifur Rahman.
   The token hunger strike started at 11:00am and continued until 4:30pm. The event was attended by many party leaders including the general secretary of the party, MA Mannan, organising secretary, Mahi B Chowdhury, MP, the city committee convener, MA Halim.
   A local shop keeper helped break the hunger strike.

A tiger took away a forest guard of east Sundarban division on Monday afternoon. The guard had come out of the Notabequi forest office in Khulna to collect fuel wood, when he was taken away from beside a pond.
   He was identified as Mahabubur Rahman, 37, a forest guard of the Notabequi forest office under east Sundarban.
   The division office sources said a tiger on Monday afternoon attacked Mahabub when he went out of the office and took him into the forest.
   According to the east Sundarban division, his colleagues instantly realised what was happening and chased the tiger with firearms but could not recover Mahbub’s body.

A young man was sentenced to 14 years’ rigorous imprisonment in an arms case in Gazipur on Monday.
   The judge, Abu Taleb, convicted the Tauhidul Islam, 30, of Tongi Khalpar. Tauhid along with his friend shot Jahirul Islam Biplob, of Tongi on September 4, 2003.
   The local residents caught hold of Tauhid in possession of a pistol and handed him over to the police.

TWo cocktails were burst Monday, in the strategic points ahead of the SAARC Summit, in the capital to create panic among the people.
   A cocktail was burst in front of Hotel Sheraton at 7:00pm Monday but none was injured, the police said.
   It is suspected that troublemakers hurled the cocktail while passing by the hotel to create panic.
   The SAARC leaders coming to Dhaka for the February 6-7 Summit will be staying in the hotel.
   Besides, a bottle lobbed at the Bangla Academy, was burst in front of a book stall creating panic among people on the campus of the month long book fair beginning today.
   The police said security measures were tightened at the book fair compound.