Bangladesh: Telecom

Bangladesh cell phone usage grows by 144%

The number of mobile phone users in Bangladesh grew by 144 per cent in 2005, to 9.4 million in December from 3.85 million a year earlier, market officials said yesterday.

The gains raised the mobile phone penetration rate among Bangladesh’s 140 million people to 6.7 per cent from 2.75 per cent. The fast-growing mobile phone market is expected to have 18 million users by next year.

Bangladesh’s top mobile company, Grameenphone, majority owned by Norway’s Telenor, which had a subscriber base of 2.4 million in December 2004, doubled that number to five million, accounting for 60 per cent of the market, said Syed Yamin Bakht, the company’s general manager.

Telecom Malaysia’s AKTEL maintained its second position, with subscriptions rising to 2.6 million from 1.1 million a year ago, said Asif Iqbal, head of marketing at the company.

Egypt’s Orascom Telecom’s Banglalink established itself in third position by aggressively marketing its service. Banglalink began its Bangladesh operations in March and attracted 1.1 million subscribers by December, a company official told Reuters.

Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. with Pacific Bangladesh Telecom Ltd (PBTL), operator of CityCell, fell to fourth position from third a year ago, with its subscriber base rising from 350,000 a year ago to 500,000.

State-run Teletalk Bangladesh Ltd had 200,000 after launching its service in March.

A Warid Telecom International (LLC) of the United Arab Emirates plans soon to launch Bangladesh’s sixth mobile phone company.

Bangladesh has 1 million fixed-line phones provided by the state-owned Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB).

WorldTel to start operation in Dhaka next March 2006

WorldTel Ltd, the lone license holder for providing land phone services in Dhaka zone, will start its operation by next March.
"We hope to start operation in next March with initial capacity of 100,000 lines and increase the number to five lakh by the end of the next year," Nayeem Chowdhury, chief executive officer of WorldTel Ltd, an UK-based telecommunications company, told The Daily Star yesterday.

The company has already imported equipment from Germany and China for providing phone service with wireless local loop (WLL) technology and installation work is going on in full swing, he said. The company had a plan to launch operation by December but the delay in obtaining allocation of microwave frequency held back the launch, Chowdhury added.

WorldTel is primarily investing around US$ 50 million and will increase it to $300 million. The company obtained licence from the government in July 2001 to provide 300,000 land phones in Dhaka at an investment of about $300 million on a build-operate-own basis with four years of exclusive right.

There are one million fixed-line phones provided by state-owned Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB) and more than nine million mobile phone lines, supplied by five operators, in the country of around 140 million people.

The demand for fixed phones in the capital is estimated to be around 10 lakh while the registered demand with the BTTB is about two lakh, sources said. The BTTB does not have the capability to meet the growing demand for land phones due to infrastructural inadequacy.

WorldTel went to court after the telecom regulator cancelled its exclusive right terming it anti-competitive and violative of the Bangladesh Telecommunications Act 2001.

The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court on August 23 this year dismissed WorldTel's petition for retaining its four-year co-exclusive right with BTTB to provide land phone in Dhaka, paving the way for private land phone companies to operate.

The central zone, also known as Dhaka Multi-Exchange Area, covers Dhaka city, Jinjira, Savar, Narayanganj, Gazipur and Tongi, and accounts for about 60 percent of the total demand for fixed phones in the country.