BTCL: Strategies (IWAD) need to implement for Survival.

A.K.M. Golam Baharul

Telecommunication is very fast growing and faster improving industry in the world. All other industries are directly or indirectly related to Telecommunications. To cop with this fast growing industry BTTB has been converted to BTCL, a state owned Public Limited Company by the ordinance of the Government of People’s Republic of Bangladesh, No: 22 of 2008 promulgated on June 01, 2008 and BTCL has started its new journey as a PLC from July01, 2008.

But unfortunately, after a long period (about 3 Years), BTCL can not attain the Goal and Mission according to its Vision. On the contrary, BTCL has become a weaker organization than before and continued same strategy will make it the weakest in very near future. So, some strategies should implement without any delay for its survival.

BTCL should run as a Company Practically

As a fact, for the last 3 Years BTCL is running neither as a company nor as government department. It is running on BTTB’s organogram. Employees of BTCL are government but BTCL is Company: a peculiar dualism.

The job status of BTCL’s present employee(Govt.) should be settled immediately and implement its own organogram completely, as BTCL can eliminate the dualism .A crash program like forming DOT, absorbing, golden handshake etc can be taken to solve employee problem. If this problem sustains longer arithmetically, BTCL will be weaker geometrically.

BTCL should start new six subsidiary Companies:

Bangladesh is a small Country with a small economy. The telecom sector of this small economy is smaller. Present trend of world business is to merging of companies of same type business to increase the corporate strength. But BTCL has been splited into three companies like: BTCL. Teletalk, BSCCL which decreases the corporate strength of these three state owned telecommunication companies. BTCL should launch six new holding companies under the umbrella of BTCL taking over Teletalk and BSCCL as its own subsidiary as follows:

Subsidiary Companies of BTCL

Name of Company	Holding of BTCL	Principal Activity
BT Mobile Services Limited (By Taking Over Teletalk)	100%	Mobile Telephony
BT Transit Services Limited (By Taking over BSCCL)	100%	IP and Voice Transit Services
BT Network Services Limited	100%	Total Network solutions to small and Corporate levels
BT Sky Network Services Limited	100%	Wimax Services
BT Real Estate Services Limited	100%	Real Estate Business
BT TV and Directory Services Limited	100%	Pay Television and Directory publication Services.

Optimizing and Divisional sizing of HR in BTCL:

The revenue of the fixed phone operator is decreasing all over the world. The 5 Years revenue of BSNL and BTCL are given bellow:

Fig1: Revenue of BSNL Fig 2: Revenue & Expend. Of BTCL

(Non operating profit of BTCL is not included.)

In this situation, optimizing and divisional sizing of human resource in BTCL should give the utmost preference. The present workforce of BTCL is neither access nor less. Threre are three catagories of employee in BTCL as: Regular, work charged and causual. Most of the regular employees are aged, Work charged are not the employee of Govt. as well as Company. Actually they have no identity. Casual staff is the main source of audit objection from the previous to today, it should completely eliminate the casual culture from BTCL for ever. BTCL should have its own regular staff according to its organogram.

On the other hand, present business mode of BTCL has been changed from past. Divisional sizing of HR in BTCL is rather different from BTTB at present telecommunication services. The divisional sizing of HR in BTCL may be as a follows:

Total by Organization Entity	Share of Today	Required Share
Corporate Development	0.2%	3%
Corporate finance	5.3%	3%
Corporate Service	2.9%	19%
Customer Service	1.3%	25%
Information Technology	2%	14%
Network	87.3%	36%
Rest	1%	0%

• Considering the standard of US department of labor, OECD.

Considering the situation above, a pragmatic organogram of BTCL should implement without any delay which will match with optimizing and divisional sizing of HR.

BTCL should recompose the present BOD:

The present structure of BOD of BTCL and BSNL are as follows:

Company Name	Member of BOD	Full Time Member	Govt. Nominee	Part Time Member	% of Full time Member	% of part time Member
BTCL	9	1	5	3	11%	91%
BSNL	12	6	2	4	50%	50%

According to the corporate governance norms laid down by CPSEs, the optimum mix of BOD should be 50% full time director and 50% part time director. But in case of BTCL it is only 11% full time director and 91% part time director which are far away from the standard and almost impossible to attain the goal of the company. So, BOD of BTCL should comprise on optimum mix immediately according to corporate governance norms.

BTCL should find a Strategic Partner and off Load 75% Share:

Government should not do business. Govt. can only augment the business environment. If Government does the business (except monopoly business) it will be losing concern in most cases for rigidity of organizational structure and mentality (due to obligation of laws) of Employees. So, BTCL should come out from the protection of government. It should run its business individually. For that BTCL should look for a strategic partner and share of BTCL may off load as follows:

Share Holder Name	Percentage of Holdings
Strategic Partner	35%
Share off load through IPO	40%
Government	25%

Reference:

1) Annual Report of BTCL

2) World wide web