Mobile operating company Citycell went out of business in 2016, mainly due to outstanding dues incurred over the years. While the name Citycell has become obsolete in the telecom community, there are still uncertainties regarding its Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) or in layman’s terms towers.
The towers have become useless as the company’s spectrum allocation has been scrapped. This has led to the suffering of people who had leased out properties to Citycell to set up towers.
The owners see no way of taking down the towers set up on top the buildings as the company is yet to pay years’ worth of dues. Not only are the property owners not receiving their due rent, they are now under pressure from the power company to clear out the long overdue bills incurred by those towers.
The owners regularly haunt the Citycell offices at Dhaka’s Mohakhali to no avail, as the authorities are unavailable.
Citycell has a total of 876 towers, 700 of which were shut down by the power company since they had been failing to pay the dues even two years before shut down. Since then, the company operated with only 176 towers, but the rent for those places was long overdue.
Noor Mohammad Khan, a resident of Mirpur-6, said that he signed a 10-year contract with Citycell to rent out his rooftop in 2006. He received the rent duly till 2014 but for the last four years, not only has the rent been due, the tower has racked up an electricity bill of Tk 100,000 for which the power company regularly harasses him.
Mohammad said that according to the contract he was supposed to be paid Tk 6000 per month for the first three years since 2006. For the next three years he got Tk 6,600 per month and was supposed to be paid Tk 7,800 since 2016. However, the authorities have under many excuses refrained from paying the rent since 2014.
“I went to the Citycell office many a times but haven’t been able to contact anyone,” he said, adding that the security guard there was also unable to direct him somewhere.
He said that that like him, many others are haunting the office for their outstanding rent and power bill of over four years.
Noor Mohammad further said that two men identifying themselves as Citycell employees took away a few expensive equipments from the towers and assured him that the dues would be paid a few days ago but he didn’t hear back from them anymore.
Meanwhile, Citycell’s chief executive Mebub Chowdhury has been unreachable for any comments.
Pacific Bangladesh Telecom Limited Employees Union former president Ashraful Karim told Bangla Tribune that the towers that were once Citycell’s asset have morphed into a liability.
“They will need to pay the dues in order to remove the towers from different buildings. Hence it’s given that Citycell will not take them back,” he added.
Karim said that the towers were close to useless as they operated using CDM technology, which no other mobile operating company uses.
Besides, even the four companies licensed for tower sharing cannot make use of them, he added.
Back in July of 2016, Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulation Commission released a circular asking the Citycell customers to switch to another operating company within two weeks. The matter was dragged to the courts, and in August of that year, the Appellate Division ordered that the company continue its operations to pay off dues worth Tk 4.77 billion in two instalments.
According to BTRC data, as of July 31 of 2016, Citycell had a customer base of 668,000 among which 150,000 were active i.e registered biometrically.
The very same year in October, the operator’s spectrum allocation was stayed but was restored after 17 days following an order from the apex court. Even though their switch rooms were made operational but due to lack of customers and inability to pay off the debts, Citycell was shut down altogether.